



I 



n^>' 



J LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.} 

$ G&r^ ■ 

tfy*.'& I°i«'4 r ° 

I * m$ 

§ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






M 




I 




■ 


Y/. 



I 



■ 



I 



H 







Ground 



THE 



Te a -Ta b I e. 



BY 



T. DE WITT TALMAGE, 
u 

Author or "Crumbs Swept Up," "Abominations of Modern Society," 
"Old Wells Dug Out," etc. 



Sold Only by Subscriptlon 



ySQlt 



PHILADELPHIA: 
COWPERTHWAIT & COMPANY. 

1874. 



T5* 



qfel 



^ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 181k, by 

COWPERTHWA1T &> CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



PREFACE. 

\ T breakfast we have no time to spare, for 
-*- -^ the duties of the day are clamoring for 
attention ; at the noon-day dining-hour some of 
the family are absent ; but at six o'clock in the 
evening we all come to the tea-table for chit-chat 
and the recital of adventures. We take our 
friends in with us — the more friends, the merrier. 
You may imagine that the following chapters are 
things said or conversations indulged in, or papers 
read, or paragraphs made up from that interview. 
We now open the doors very wide and invite all 
to come in and be seated around the Tea-Table. 

T. D. W. T. 

Brooklyn, N. Y., Sept. i, 1874. 

5 



CONTENTS. 



CHAP. PAGE 

I. — The Table-Cloth is Spread n 

II. — Mr. Givemfits and Dr. Butterfield 19 

III. — A Growler Soothed 24 

IV. — The Balloon Wedding 29 

V. — Carlo and the Freezer 37 

VI. — Old Games Repeated 47 

VII. — The Full-Blooded Cow 53 

VIII. — The Dregs in Leatherback's Tea-Cup 59 

IX. — The Hot Axle 64 

X. — Beefsteak for Ministers 72 

XI. — Shooting Porpoises 77 

XII. — Autobiography of an Old Pair of Scissors 81 

XIII. — A Lie, Zoologically Considered 92 

XIV.— A Breath of English Air 99 

XV. — The Midnight Lecture 105 

XVI.— The Sexton 112 

XVII.— The Old Cradle 118 

XVIII. — The Horse's Letter 125 

XIX. — Kings of the Kennel 131 

XX. — The Massacre of Church Music 139 

XXI. — The General Conference 145 

XXII. — The Battle of Pew and Pulpit 151 

XXIII. — Brigham and Wives Multitudinous 160 

1* 7 



8 COXTEXTS. 

CHAP. PAGE 

XXIV. — The Devil's Grist-Mill ; 106 

XXV. — The Conductor's Dream 173 

XJtVL— Posh 6c Pull 1S1 

XXVIL— Bostonians 1S6 

XXVIII. — JONAH VS. THE WHALE I9I 

XXIX. — Something Under the Sofa „ 193 

XXX. — The Way to Keep Fresh 197 

XXXI. — Christmas Bells ! 201 

XXXII. — The Mondayish Feeling 206 

XXXIII.— D. S. M 212 

XXXIV. — The Sin of Small Type 215 

XXXV. — Poor Preaching 218 

XXXVI. — The Rocky Mountain Locomotive 222 

XXXVII. — Shelves a Man's Index 231 

XXXVIII. — Behavior at Church 23S 

XXXIX. — Masculine and Feminine 245 

XL. — Literary Felony 249 

XLL — Literary Abstinence, 253 

XLII. — Short or Long Pastorates 256 

XLIII. — An Editor's Chip Basket 259 

XLTV. — The Manhood of Service 263 

XLV. — Balky People 266 

XLVI . — Anonymous Letters 271 

XLVTI. — Brawn or Brain 276 

XLVIII. — Warm- Weather Religion 2S5 

XLIX. — Hiding Eggs for Easter 290 

L. — Sink or Swim 297 

LI. — Shells from the Beach 302 

LI I. — Catching the Bay Mare 308 

LIII. — Our First and Last Cigar 314 

LIV. — Move, Moving. Moved 320 

LV. — The Advantage of Small Libraries 327 



CONTENTS. 9 

CHAP. PAGE 

LVI. — Reformation in Letter Writing 333 

LVII. — Royal Marriages 336 

LVIII. — Three Visits 339 

LIX. — Manahachtanienks 346 

LX. — A Dip in the Sea 351 

LXI. — Hard Shell Considerations 356 

LXII. — Wiseman, Heavyasbricks and Quizzle 361 

LXIII. — A Layer of Waffles 379 

LXIV.— Friday Evening 401 



SABBATH EVENINGS. 

LXV. — The Sabbath Evening Tea-Table 411 

LXVI. — The Warm Heart of Christ 414 

LXVIL — Sacrificing Everything 419 

LXVIII. — The Youngsters have Left 423 

LXIX. — Family Prayers 437 

LXX. — A Call to Sailors 442 

LXXI. — Jehoshaphat's Shipping 448 

LXXIL — All About Mercy 455 

LXXIIL — Under the Camel's Saddle 462 

LXXIV. — Half and Half Churches 470 

LXXV.— Thorns 474 

LXXVL— Who Touched Me? 478 

LXXVII. — Christ at the Country-Seat 487 

LXXVIII. — Bereavement 490 

LXXIX. — The Ragamuffins 495 

LXXX. — Harsh Criticisms 501 




ILLUSTRATIONS. 



PAGE 

I.— AROUND THE TEA-TABLE . . . Frontispiece. 

2.— CARLO AND THE FREEZER 41 

3.— SHOOTING PORPOISES ...... 79 

4.— KINGS OF THE KENNEL 135 

5.— THE CONDUCTOR'S DREAM 175 

6.— CHRISTMAS BELLS 203 

7.— THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE . . 225 

8.— BALKY 267 

9.— OUR FIRST CIGAR 317 

10.— MANAHACHTANIENKS 347 

11.— A CALL TO SAILORS 445 

12.— WHO TOUCHED ME? 479 

10 



Around the Tea-Table. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE TABLE-CLOTH LS SPREAD. 

OUR theory has always been, " Eat lightly 
in the evening." While, therefore, morning 
and noon there is bountifulness, we do not have 
much on our tea-table but dishes and talk. The 
most of the world's work ought to be finished by 
six o'clock p.m. The children are home from 
school. The wife is done mending or shopping. 
The merchant has got through with dry-goods 
or hardware. Let the ring of the tea-bell be sharp 
and musical. Walk into the room fragrant with 
Oolong or Young Hyson. Seat yourself at the 
tea-table wide enough apart to have room to take 
out your pocket-handkerchief if you want to cry at 
any pitiful story of the day, or to spread yourself 
in laughter if some one propound an irresistible 

conundrum. 

11 



12 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

The bottle rules the sensual world, but the tea- 
cup is queen in all the fair dominions. Once this 
leaf was very rare, and fifty dollars a pound ; and 
when the East India Company made a present to 
the king of two pounds and two ounces, it was 
considered worth a mark in history. But now 
Uncle Sam and his wife ever)' year pour thirty 
million pounds of it into their saucers. Twelve 
hundred years ago, a Chinese scholar by the name 
of Lo Yu wrote of tea, " It tempers the spirits 
and harmonizes the mind, dispels lassitude and 
relieves fatigue, awakens thought and prevents 
drowsiness, lightens and refreshes the bodv and 
clears the perceptive faculties." Our own obser- 
vation is that there is nothing that so loosens the 
hinge of the tongue, soothes the temper, exhila- 
rates the diaphragm, kindles sociality and makes 
the future promising. Like one of the small 
glasses in the wall of Barnum's old museum, 
through which vou could see cities and mountains 
bathed in sunshine, so, as you drink from the tea- 
cup, and get on toward the bottom so that it is 
sufficiently elevated, vou can see almost anything 
glorious that you want to. We had a great-aunt 
who used to come from town with the pockets of 
her bombazine dress standing way out with nice 
things for the children, but she would come in 
looking black as a thunder-cloud until she had got 



THE TABLECLOTH IS SPREAD. 1 3 

through with her first cup of tea, when she would 
empty her right pocket of sugar-plums, and 
having finished her second cup would empty the 
other pocket, and after she had taken an extra 
third cup, because she felt so very chilly, it took 
all the sitting-room and parlor and kitchen to con- 
tain her exhilaration. 

Be not surprised if, after your friends are seated 
at the table, the style of the conversation depends 
very much on the kind of tea that the housewife 
pours for the guests. If it be genuine Young 
Hyson, the leaves of which are gathered early in 
the season, the talk will be fresh, and spirited, and 
sunshiny. If it be what the Chinese call Pearl 
tea, but our merchants have named Gunpowder, 
the conversation will be explosive, and somebody's 
reputation will be killed before you get through. 
If it be green tea, prepared by large infusion of 
Prussian blue and gypsum, or black tea mixed 
with pulverized black lead, you may expect there 
will be a poisonous effect in the conversation and 
the moral health damaged. The English Parlia- 
ment found that there had come into that country 
two million pounds of what the merchants call 
" lie tea," and, as far as I can estimate, about the 
same amount has been imported into the United 
States ; and when the housewife pours into the 
cups of her guests a decoction of this "lie tea" 



14 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

the group are sure to fall to talking about their 
neighbors, and misrepresenting everything they 
touch. One meeting of a "sewing society" up in 
Canada where this tea was served resulted in two 
law-suits for slander, four black eyes that were not 
originally of that color, the expulsion of the min- 
ister, and the abrupt removal from the top of the 
sexton's head of all capillary adornment. 

But on our tea-table we will have first-rate 
Ningyong, or Pouchong, or Souchong, or Oolong, 
so that the conversation may be pure and healthy. 

We propose from time to time to report some 
of the talk of our visitors at the tea-table. We do 
not entertain at tea many very great men. The 
fact is that great men at the tea-table for the most 
part are a bore. They are apt to be self-absorbed, 
or so profound I cannot understand them, or ana- 
lytical of food, or nervous from having studied 
themselves half to death, or exhume a piece of 
brown bread from their coat-tail because they are 
dyspeptic, or make such solemn remarks about 
hydro-benzamide or sulphindigotic acid that the 
children get frightened and burst out crying, 
thinking something dreadful is going to happen. 
Learned Johnson, splashing his pompous wit over 
the table for Boswell to pick up, must have been a 
sublime nuisance. It was said of Goldsmith that 
"he wrote like an angel and talked like poor 



THE TABLE-CLUTH IS SPREAD. I 5 

Poll." There is more interest in the dining-room 
when we have ordinary people than when we have 
extraordinary. 

There are men and women who occasionally 
meet at our tea-table whose portraits are worth 
taking. There are Dr. Butterfield, Mr. Givemfits, 
Dr. Heavyasbricks, Miss Smiley and Miss Stinger, 
who come to see us. We expect to invite them 
all to tea very soon ; and as you will in future hear 
of their talk, it is better that I tell you now some 
of their characteristics. 

Dr. Butterfield is one of our most welcome 
visitors at the tea-table. As his name indicates, 
he is both melting and beautiful. He always takes 
pleasant views of things. He likes his tea sweet; 
and after his cup is passed to him, he frequently 
hands it back, and says, " This is really delightful, 
but a little more sugar, if you please." He has a 
mellowing effect upon the whole company. After 
hearing him talk a little while, I find tears standing 
in my eyes without any sufficient reason. It is 
almost as good as a sermon to see him wipe his 
mouth with a napkin. I would not want him all 
alone to tea, because it would be making a meal 
of sweetmeats. But when he is present with 
others of different temperament, he is entertaining. 
He always reminds me of the dessert called floating 
island, beaten egg on custard. On all subjects — 



1 6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

political, social and religious — he takes the smooth 
side. He is a minister, and preached a course of 
fifty-one sermons on heaven in one year, saying 
that he would preach on the last and fifty- second 
Sunday concerning a place of quite opposite cha- 
racter ; but the audience assembling on that day in 
August, he rose, and said that it was too hot to 
preach, and so dismissed them immediately with a 
benediction. At the tea-table I never could per- 
suade him to take any currant-jelly, for he always 
preferred strawberry jam. He rejects acidity. 

We generally place opposite him at the tea- 
table Mr. Givemfits. He is the very antipodes 
of Dr. Butterfield ; and when the two talk, you get 
both sides of a subject. I have to laugh to hear 
them talk ; and my little girl, at the controversial 
collisions, gets into such hysterics that we have 
to send her with her mouth full into the next room, 
to be pounded on the back to stop her from chok- 
ing. My friend Givemfits is " down on " almost 
everything but tea, and I think one reason of his 
nervous, sharp, petulant way is that he takes too 
much of this beverage. He thinks the world is 
very soon coming to an end, and says, " The sooner 
the better, confound it !" He is a literary man, 
a newspaper writer, a book critic, and so on ; but 
if he were a minister, he would preach a course 
of fifty-one sermons on " future punishment," pro- 



THE TABLE-CLOTH IS SPUE AD. \J 

posing to preach the fifty-second and last Sabbath 
on " future rewards ;" but the last Sabbath com- 
ing- in December, he would say to his audience, 
" Really, it is too cold to preach. We will close 
with the doxology and omit the benediction, as I 
must go down by the stove to warm." 

He does not like women — thinks they are of 
no use in the world, save to set the tea a-drawing. 
Says there was no trouble in Paradise till a female 
came there, and that ever since Adam lost the rib 
woman has been to man a bad pain in the side. 
He thinks that Dr. Butterfield, who sits opposite 
him at the tea-table, is something of a hypocrite, 
and asks him all sorts of puzzling questions. The 
fact is it is vinegar-cruet against sugar-bowl in 
perpetual controversy. I do not blame Givemfits 
as much as many do. His digestion is poor. The 
chills and fever enlarged his spleen. He has fre- 
quent attacks of neuralgia. Once a week he has 
the sick headache. His liver is out of order. He 
has twinges of rheumatism. Nothing he ever 
takes agrees with him but tea, and that doesn't. 
He has had a good deal of trial, and the thunder 
of trouble has soured the milk of human kindness. 
When he gets criticising Dr. Butterfield's sermons 
and books, I have sometimes to pretend that I hear 
somebody at the front door, so that I can go out in 
the hall and have an uproarious laugh without 



1 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

being indecorous. It is one of the great amuse- 
ments of my life to have on opposite sides of my 
tea-table Dr. Butterfield and Mr. Givemfits. 

But we have many others who come to our tea- 
table : Miss Smiley, who often runs in about six 
o'clock. All sweetness is Miss Smiley. She seems 
to like everybody, and everybody seems to like 
her. Also Miss Stinger, sharp as a hornet, prides 
herself on saying things that cut ; dislikes men ; 
cannot bear the sight of a pair of boots ; loathes a 
shaving apparatus; thinks Eve would have shown 
better capacity for house-keeping if she had, the 
first time she used her broom, swept Adam out of 
Paradise. Besides these ladies, many good, bright, 
useful and sensible people of all kinds. In a few 
days we shall invite a group of them to tea, and 
you shall hear some of their discussions of men 
and books and things. We shall order a canister 
of the best Young Hyson, pull out the extension- 
table, hang on the kettle, stir the blaze, and with 
chamois and silver-powder scour up the tea-set 
that we never use save when we have company. 



mr ^^ 




CHAPTER II. 

MR. GIVEMFITS AND DR. BUTTER FIELD. 

THE tea-kettle never sang a sweeter song 
than on the evening I speak of. It evidently 
knew that company was coming. At the appointed 
time our two friends, Dr. Butterfield and Mr. 
Givemfits, arrived. As already intimated, they 
were opposite in temperament — the former mild, 
mellow, fat, good-natured and of fine digestion, 
always seeing the bright side of anything; the 
other, splenetic, harsh, and when he swallowed 
anything was not sure whether he would be the 
death of it, or it would be the death of him. 

No sooner had they taken their places opposite 
each other at the table than conversation opened. 
As my wife was handing the tea over to Mr. 
Givemfits the latter broke out in a tirade against 
the weather. He said that this winter was the 
most unbearable that had ever been known in the 
almanacs. When it did not rain, it snowed ; and 
when it was not mud, it was sleet. At this point 
he turned around and coughed violently, and said 
that in such atmosphere it was impossible to keep 

2* 19 



20 AROCXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

clear of colds. He thought he would £0 South. 
He would rather not live at all than live in such a 
climate as this. Xo chance here, save for doctors 
and undertakers, and even they have to take their 
own medicines and lie in their own coffins. 

At this Dr. Butterfield gave a good-natured 
laugh, and said, " I admit the inconveniences of 
the weather ; but are you not aware that there has 
been a drought for three years in the country, and 
great suffering in the land for lack of rain ? We 
need all this wet weather to make an equilibrium. 
What is discomfort to you is the wealth of the 
land. Besides that, I find that if I cannot get sun- 
shine in the open air I can earn' it in the crown 
of my hat. He who has a warm coat, and a full 
stove, and a comfortable house, ought not to spend 
much of his time in complaint." 

Miss Smiley slid this moment into the conver- 
sation with a heart}" "Ha! ha!" She said, "This 
last winter has been the happiest of my life. I 
never hear the winds gallop but I want to join 
them. The snow is onlv the winter in blossom. 
Instead of here and there on the pond, the whole 
country is covered with white lilies. I have seen 
gracefulness enough in the curve of a snowdrift 
to keep me in admiration for a week. Do you 
remember that morning after the storm of sleet, 
when every tree stood in mail of ice, with drawn 



MR. GIVEMFITS AND DR. BUTTER FIELD. 21 

sword of icicle ? Besides, I think the winter drives 
us in, and drives us together. We have never 
had such a time at our house with checker-boards, 
and dominoes, and blind-man's-buff, and the piano, 
as this winter. Father and mother said it seemed 
to them like getting married over again. Besides 
that, on nights when the storm was so great that 
the door-bell went to bed and slept soundly, 
Charles Dickens stepped in from Gad's Hill ; and 
Henry W. Longfellow, without knocking, entered 
the sitting-room, his hair white as if he had walked 
through the snow with his hat off; and William H. 
Prescott, with his eyesight restored, happened in 
from Mexico, a cactus in his buttonhole ; and Au- 
dubon set a cage of birds on the table — Baltimore 
oriole, chaffinch, starling and bobolink doing their 
prettiest; and Christopher North thumped his gun 
down on the hallfloor, and hung his 'sporting 
jacket' on the hat-rack, and shook the carpet 
brown with Highland heather. As Walter Scott 
came in his dog scampered in after him, and put 

m 

both paws up on the marble-top table ; and Minnie 
asked the old man why he did not part his hair 
better, instead of letting it hang all over his fore- 
head, and he apologized for it by the fact that he 
had been on a long tramp from Melrose Abbey to 
Kenilworth Castle. But I think as thrilling an 
evening as we had this winter was with a man who 



22 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

walked in with a prison-jacket, his shoes mouldy, 
and his cheek pallid for the want of the sunlight. 
He was so tired that he went immediately to sleep. 
He would not take the sofa, saying he was not 
used to that, but he stretched himself on the floor 
and put his head on an ottoman. At first he 
snored dreadfully, and it was evident he had a 
horrid dream ; but after a while he got easier, and 
a smile came over his face, and he woke himself 
singing and shouting. I said, ' What is the matter 
with you, and what were you dreaming about?' 
'Well,' he said, 'the bad dream I had was about 
the City of Destruction, and the happy dream was 
about the Celestial City ;' and we all knew him 
right away, and shouted, ' Glorious old John Bun- 
van ! How is Christiana ?' So, you see," said 
Miss Smiley, "on stormy nights we really have a 
pleasanter time than when the moon and stars are 
reiomincr " 

Miss Stinger had sat quietly looking into her 
tea-cup until this moment, when she clashed her 
spoon into the saucer, and said, "If there is any- 
thing I dislike, it is an attempt at poetry when you 
can't do it. I know some people who always try 
to show themselves in public : but when they are 
home, they never have their collar on straight, and 
in the morning look like a whirlwind breakfasting 
on a haystack. As for me, I am practical, and 



M A'. GIVEMFITS AND DR. BUTTERFIELD. 2$ 

winter is winter, and sleet is sleet, and ice is ice, 
and a tea-cup is a tea-cup ; and if you will pass 
mine up to the hostess to be resupplied, I will like 
it a ereat deal better than all this sentimentalism. 
No sweetening, if you please. I do not like things 
sweet. Do not put in any of your beautiful snow 
for su^ar, nor stir it with an icicle." 

This sudden jerk in the conversation snapped 
it off, and for a moment there was quiet. I knew 
not how to get conversation started again. Our 
usual way is to talk about the weather; but that 
subject had been already exhausted. 

Suddenly I saw the color for the first time in 
years come into the face of Mr. Givemfits. The 
fact was that, in biting a hard crust of bread, he 
had struck a sore tooth which had been troubling 
him, and he broke out with the exclamation, " Dr. 
Butterfield, the physical and moral world is de- 
generating. Things get worse and worse. Look, 
for instance, at the tone of many of the news- 
papers ; gossip, abuse, lies, blackmail, make up 
the chief part of them, and useful intelligence is 
the exception. The public have more interest in 
murders and steamboat explosions than in the 
items of mental and spiritual progress. Church 
and State are covered up with newspaper mud." 

" Stop !" said Dr. Butterfield. " Don't you ever 
buy newspapers ?'" 



CHAPTER III. 

A GROWLER SOOTHED 

GIVEMFITS said to Dr. Butterfield, "You 
asked me last evening if I ever bought 
newspapers. I reply, Yes, and write for them too. 
" But I see their degeneracy. Once you could 
believe nearly all they said ; now he is a fool who 
believes a tenth part of it. There is the New 
York Scandalmonger and the Philadelphia Presti- 
digitateur, and the Boston Prolific, which do noth- 
ing but hoodwink and confound the public mind. 
Ten dollars will get a favorable report of a meet- 
ing, or as much will get it caricatured. There is 
a secret spring behind almost every column. It 
depends on what the editor had for supper the 
night before whether he wants Foster hung or his 
sentence commuted. If the literary man had toast 
and tea, as weak as this before me, he sleeps 
soundly, and next day says in his columns that 
Foster ought not to be executed ; he is a good 
fellow, and the clergymen who went to Albany to 
get him pardoned were engaged in a holy calling, 
and their congregations had better hold fast of 
them lest they go up like Elijah. But if the editor 

24 



A GROWLER SOOTHED. 25 

had a supper at eleven o'clock at night of scallops 
fried in poor lard, and a little too much bourbon, 
the next day he is headachy and says Foster, the 
scalawag, ought to be hung, or beaten to death 
with his own car-hook, and the ministers who went 
to Albany to get him pardoned might better have 
been taking tea with some of the old ladies. I 
have been behind the scenes and know all about 
it, and must admit that I have done some of the 
bad work myself. I have on my writing-stand 
thirty or forty books to discuss as a critic, and the 
column must be made up. Do you think I take 
time to read the thirty or forty books ? No. I first 
take a dive into the index, a second dive into the 
preface, a third dive into the four hundredth page, 
the fourth dive into the seventieth page, and then 
seize my pen and do up the whole job in fifteen 
minutes. I make up my mind to like the book or 
not to like it, according as I admire or despise the 
author. But the leniency or severity of my article 
depends on whether the room is cold and my 
rheumatism that day is sharp or easy. Speaking 
of these things reminds me that the sermon which 
the Right Reverend Bishop Goodenough preached 
last Sunday on 'Growth in Grace' was taken 
down and brought to our office by a reporter who 
fell over the door-sill of the sanctum so drunk we 
had to help him up and fish in his pockets for the 



26 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

bishop's sermon on holiness of heart and life, 
which we were sure was somewhere about him." 

"Tut! tut!" cried Dr. Butterfield. "I think, 
Mr. Givemfits, you are entirely mistaken. [The 
doctor all the while stirring the sugar in his cup.] 
I think the printing-press is a might)* agency for 
the world's betterment. If I were not a minister, 
I would be an editor. There are Bohemians in 
the newspaper profession, as in all others, but do 
not denounce the entire apostleship for the sake 
of one Judas. Reporters, as I know them, are 
clever fellows, worked almost to death, compelled 
to keep unseasonable hours, and have temptations 
to tight which few other occupations endure. Con- 
sidering the blunders and indistinctness of the 
public speaker, I think they get things wonderfully 
accurate. The speaker murders the king's Eng- 
lish, and is mad because the reporter cannot resus- 
citate the corpse. I once made a speech at an ice- 
cream festival amid great embarrassments, and 
hemmed, and hawed, ?nd expectorated cotton from 
mv drv mouth, and sweat like a Turkish bath, the 
adjectives, and the nouns, and verbs, and prep- 
ositions of my address keeping an Irish wake ; 
but the next day, in the Johnstown Advocate, my 
remarks read as gracefully as Addison's Spectator, 
I knew a phonographer in Washington whose 
en lire business it was to weed out from Congress- 



A GROWLER SOOTHED. 2} 

men's speeches the sins against Anglo-Saxon ; but 
the work was too much for him, and he died of 
delirium tremens, from having drank too much of 
the wine of syntax, in his ravings imagining that 
1 interrogations ' were crawling over him like 
snakes, and that ' interjections ' were thrusting 
him through with daggers, and ' periods ' struck 
him like bullets, and his body seemed torn apart 
by disjunctive conjunctions. No, Mr. Givemfits, 
you are too hard. And as to the book-critics 
whom you condemn, they do more for the circula- 
tion of books than any other class, especially if 
they denounce and caricature, for then human 
nature will see the book at any price. After I had 
published my book on The Philosophy of Civiliza- 
tion it was so badgered by the critics and called so 
many hard names that my publishers could not 
print it fast enough to meet the demands of the 
curious. Besides, what would we do without the 
newspaper ? With the iron n.ke of the telegraph 
it draws the whole world to. our door every morn- 
ing. The sermon that the minister preached to 
five hundred people on Sabbath the newspaper 
next day preaches to fifty thousand. It takes the 
verses which the poet chimed in his small room of 
ten feet by six, and rings them into the ears of the 
continent. The cylinder of the printing-press is 
to be one of the wheels of the Lord's chariot. 



28 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

The good newspapers will overcome the bad ones, 
and the honey-bees will outnumber the hornets. 
Instead of the three or four religious newspapers 
that once lived on gruel and pap, sitting down 
once a week on some good man's door-step to 
rest, thankful if not kicked off, now many of the 
denominations have stalwart journals that swing 
their scythe through the sins of the world, and are 
avant courieis of the Lord's coming." 

As Dr. Butterfleld concluded this sentence his 
face shone like a harvest moon. We had all 
dropped our knives, and were looking at him. 
The Young Hyson tea was having its mollifying 
effect on the whole company. Mr. Givemfits had 
made way with his fourth cup (they were small 
cups, the set we use for company), and he was 
entirely soothed and moderated in his opinions 
about everything, and actually clapped his hands 
at Dr. Butterfield's peroration. Even Miss Stinger 
was in a glow, for she had drank large quantities 
of the fragrant beverage while piping hot, and in 
her delight she took Givemfits' arm, and asked 
him if he ever meant to get married. Miss Smi- 
ley smiled. Then Dr. Butterfleld lifted his cup, 
and proposed a toast which we all drank stand- 
ing: "The mission of the printing-press! The 
salubrity of the climate ! The prospects ahead ! 
The wonders of Oolong and Young Hyson !" 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE BALLOON WEDDING. 

OUR old group of tea-table friends is dispersed. 
Our sour friend, Mr. Givemfits, the book- 
critic, is dead. I meant to have broken to you the 
news more gradually, but it slipped out. He died 
of aggravated dyspepsia and virulent acidity of 
stomach. At the post-mortem examination the 
surgeon found that his spleen had greatly enlarged, 
this spongy viscus near the fundus of the stomach 
having entirely vitiated the left hypochondrium. 
It was found also that his gall had turned wrong- 
side out. He kept up for a few days by the in- 
spiration of green tea of the strongest sort ; in- 
deed, cologne and camphor did not revive him so 
much as the smell of the caddy. But at last he 
gave out, saying, " No use ! My tea does me no 
good. Send that pile of books that I have not fin- 
ished to the critic over the way. I am glad to get 
out of this miserable world. Good-bye. Tell Mr. 
Talmage to preach at my obsequies from the text, 
'All men are liars.'" 

Our friend, Dr. Butterfield, the bundle of sun- 

29 



30 AROUND THE TEA TABLE. 

shine, and our Miss Stinger, the censorious, are 
going into connubial partnership. When, one 
evening after tea, I saw Miss Stinger and Dr. 
Butterfield looking into each other's eyes, I said to 
my wife, "There is another match!" From the 
way the sun rises I can guess the "weather proba- 
bilities." The dispositions of these opposites have 
been rapidly assimilating. Dr. Butterfield is not 
so placid as he was, and by recently sitting up late 
at nights has become quite acerb and sharp in his 
temper ; while Miss Stinger, from dwelling so 
much in the comparative sunshine of the doctor, 
has been very much mellowed ; and so the Arctic 
and the Antarctic will probably meet at the equator. 
Indeed, I will tell you a secret: these two are to 
be married next Wednesday night. 

As we were talking last night at the tea-table 
about this coming event one of the visitors cried 
out, " Speaking of weddings reminds me of the 
famous balloon wedding-. Tell us all about it." 
So, after the napkins had been folded and put in 
the rings, and the spoons had been lifted from the 
saucers into the cups, in signal that we were all 
done with the evening beverage, I told them a real 
story of eight years ago. 

One day, when I was living in Philadelphia, a 
celebrated balloonist was ushered into my study. 
He had just arrived from New York with an invi- 



THE BALLOOX WEDDING. 3 I 

tation from one of my scientific friends who wished 
me to come on to Fifth Avenue Hotel, in the 
wicked city of New York (all Philadelphians think 
New York very wicked), and unite him in mar- 
riage with a most excellent lady of that city. The 
messenger said that after the marriage ceremony 
the wedding-party proposed to go up in a balloon 
from Central Park, the scientific friend before men- 
tioned having made a costly piece of philosophical 
apparatus by which he expected to experiment on 
air currents as he ascended to the clouds. 

The evening before the wedding I arrived at 
Fifth Avenue Hotel, where effort was made to in- 
duce me to perform the ceremony in the balloon 
and up among the clouds. But I refused, saying 
that while I believed in the " higher law," I doubted 
the legality of a wedding performed so high up 
above the reach of municipal authority; besides 
that, my head is apt to get dizzy at a great height, 
and I might not be able to see straight enough to 
tie the knot ; besides that, it is very risky for my 
church to have its pastor go so high up, lest, hav- 
ing got so finely started, he should not return, 
the memory of Elijah flashing across me ; besides 
that, if I should slip and fall from a height of two 
or three miles, somebody standing underneath 
would be almost sure to get hurt. Of course I 
remembered the proverb that " matches are made 



32 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

in heaven," but I do not believe it, for some of 
them are lucifer matches, and from the odor of 
brimstone I know they are made in the other 
place. Besides all these objections to performing 
the ceremony in the clouds, the reporters would 
get hold of it ; and as it was a dull time among 
them, I knew that what was left of me after the 
balloon peril they would finish. 

Persisting in this idea, at two o'clock p. m., in 
the parlor of Fifth Avenue Hotel, I united in wed- 
lock as scientific a gentleman and as good a lady 
as the country holds. I w r as invited to go up to 
Central Park and see the wedding-party start on 
the balloon excursion. Having several hours be- 
fore the rail train started, I accepted the invitation. 
The newspapers had stated that I would perform 
the weddinor as the balloon was beinof cut loose 
from the earth — the only time I ever knew the 
newspapers to be mistaken ! The great natural 
amphitheatre in the park had been enclosed. At 
one dollar a head, the largest audience I ever saw 
were assembled, on tip-toe of excitement. The 
house-tops in proximity were covered with people 
anxious to see the bride and groom and minister 
and balloon. It was four o'clock when I arrived 
on the ground, unaccompanied; and arousing no 
suspicion as to who I was, I had an opportunity of 



THE BALLOON Ml: PL) IXC. 33 

gazing on the most amusing and side-splitting 
scene I ever witnessed. 

The great balloon fastened to the earth swung 
and struggled and flopped, as much as to say, 
"Time to go; bring on your wedding-party." 
There were ten or fifteen reporters present. Some 
of them had their pieces all written ; others were 
busy. One clever fellow, reporting for " The New 
York Winding Sheet," showed me his piece with 
full description of bride and groom and minister, 
saying he had never seen the minister and wanted 
to know if I had, and if I thought that his descrip- 
tion was accurate. I told him I thought it was 
beautiful, and that if the minister was not satisfied 
with that he never would be satisfied with anything. 
The balloon not being quite ready, the bride and 
groom took a long ride through the park, and it 
was getting toward night, and the reporters became 
impatient and demanded that the balloon start and 
the wedding begin. I quietly told one of the re- 
porters that the wedding had been performed two 
hours before in the Fifth Avenue Hotel. He de- 
nied it, till I told him that I was the minister. " It 
can't be possible," he said, " that you went and did 
that in the hotel ? Why that spoils all my piece ! 
Here is a long description of the whole thing as 
occurring two miles high! What shall I do with 
this two columns of fine description ! Sir, I de- 



54 AKOL'XD THE TEA-TABLE. 

mand that you do something to make this report 
appropriate, I asked, "What would you have 
me do?" " Oh," said he, "you must pronounce 
the benediction, or bless the people, or say a little, 
or do something religious : I don't care what it is." 
As I saw the excitement was spreading. I took the 
carriage, and by ten o'clock p. m. was at my home 
in Philadelphia But next morning didn't I catch 
it? One ot the newspapers was headed : "Wed- 
ding in the Clouds! Disgraceful Scene ! Tal- 
mage Two Miles High! Ceremony Aw ..y U: ' 
followed by minute description of how the minister, 
standing somewhere near the man in the moon, 
kissed the bride, and then sat down on the edge of 
the balloon, and looked ten thousand feet down at 
the golden sunset and the ereat city beneath, with 
all its mighty populations of sentient people, ai 
other things as fine as that. Some of the religious 
papers were shocked — that is. they lied: and when 
religious papers do lie. they beat "The Xew York 
Winding- Sheet." for thev come to the work 
fresher. They said. " Here is a regularly ordained 
minister cutting up antics two miles above the 
clouds. We all feel humiliated. Let us pray !" 

It was a great harvest for the pictorials. The 
news-rooms were lined with representations ol 
" Talmage Getting into the Ballo x. Talmage 
with his Coat Tail Flying over the Side of the 



the balloon wedding. 35 

Walloon. Talmage Performing the Ceremony. 
Talmage Congratulating the Bride. Talmage 
Begging to Come Down because he Felt so 
Chilly. Talmage Spilled Out at Midnight on 
the Other Side of Hoboken, Asking which Way 
was Up and Down." We do not remember just 
the words, but it was as lively as that. The bal- 
loon professor got all the money that was made 
out of the affair, but my compensation was chiefly 
religious. We got so many good lessons from 
the secular and religious newspapers about that 
time that we grew rapidly better, although many 
did not notice the favorable change. It put me on 
my guard about weddings, and the next time I 
married a couple I told them plainly that I was not 
responsible for their style of wedding-trip, and 
positively refused to go with them anywhere, 
whether in car, stage or balloon, and that I did not 
care, after I had married them, whether they went 
up or down. 

Now, my advice to all these young people 
around this tea-table is not to make a balloon ex- 
cursion when they get married, nor spend all their 
money in going to see Niagara Falls or the Mam- 
moth Cave or the World's Exhibition. The most 
sensible wedding excursion is that which is made 
when the oroom takes the bride from her father's 
house, by the shortest route, to his own modest 



$6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

and unpretentious home, arranged for her coming. 
Four rooms will do as well as a castle. Two 
happy hearts are the finest furniture ; and a tea- 
table with a young married man to ask the bless- 
ing on one side, and a young wife to hand over 
the smoking cup from the other side, beats Niag- 
ara Falls, Mammoth Cave and the World's Exhi- 
bition. If heaven is anything happier than that, I 
know not how we will stand it. 



^w 




CHAPTER V. 

CARLO AND THE FREEZER. 

WE had a jolly time at our tea-table this 
evening. We had not seen our old friend 
for ten years. When I heard his voice in the hall, 
it seemed like a snatch of " Auld Lang Syne." 
He came from Belleville, where was the first home 
we ever set up for ourselves. It was a stormy 
evening, and we did not expect company, but we 
soon made way for him at the table. Jennie was 
very willing to stand up at the corner ; and after a 
fair napkin had been thrown over the place where 
she had dropped a speck of jelly, our friend and I 
began the rehearsal of other days. While I was 
alluding to a circumstance that occurred between 
me and one of my Belleville neighbors the children 
cried out with stentorian voice, "Tell us about 
Carlo and the freezer ;" and they kicked the leg 
of the table, and beat with both hands, and clat- 
tered the knives on the plate, until I was compelled 
to shout, " Silence ! You act like a band of 
Arabs ! Frank, you had better swallow what you 
have in your mouth before you attempt to talk." 
Order having been gained, I began : 

37 



38 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

We sat in the country parsonage, on a cold 
winter day, looking out of our back window to- 
ward the house of a neighbor. She was a model 
of kindness, and a most convenient neighbor to 
have. It was a rule between us that when either 
house was in want of anything it should borrow 
of the other. The rule worked well for the par- 
sonage, but rather badly for the neighbor, because 
on our side of the fence we had just begun to keep 
house, and needed to borrow everything, while we 
had nothing to lend, except a few sermons, which 
the neighbor never tried to borrow, from the fact 
that she had enough of them on Sundays. There 
is no danger that your neighbor will burn a hole 
in your new brass kettle if you have none to lend. 
It will excite no surprise tp say that we had an 
interest in all that happened on the other side of 
the parsonage fence, and that any injury inflicted 
on so kind a woman would rouse our sympathy. 

On the wintry morning of which we speak our 
neighbor had been making ice-cream ; but there 
being some defect in the machinery, the cream 
had not sufficiently congealed, and so she set the 
can of the freezer containing the luxury on her 
back steps, expecting the cold air would completely 
harden it. What was our dismay to see that our 
dog Carlo, on whose early education we were ex- 
pending great care, had taken upon himself the 



CARLO AND THE FREEZER, 39 

office of ice-cream inspector, and was actually 
busy with the freezer? We hoisted the window 
and shouted at him, but his mind was so absorbed 
in his undertaking he did not stop to listen. Carlo 
was a greyhound, thin, gaunt and long-nosed, and 
he was already making his way on down toward 
the bottom of the can. His eyes and all his head 
had disappeared in the depths of the freezer. In- 
deed, he was so far submerged that when he heard 
us, with quick and infuriate pace, coming up close 
behind him, he could not get his head out, and so 
started with the encumbrance on his head, in what 
direction he knew not. No do°f was ever in a 
more embarrassing position — freezer to the right 
of him, freezer to the left of him, freezer on the 
top of him, freezer under him. 

So, thoroughly blinded, he rushed against the 
fence, then against the side of the house, then 
against a tree. He barked as though he thought 
he might explode the nuisance with loud sound, 
but the sound was confined in so strange a speak- 
ing-trumpet that he could not have known his own 
voice. His way seemed hedged up. Fright and 
anger and remorse and shame whirled him about 
without mercy. 

A feeling of mirthfulness, which sometimes takes 
me on most inappropriate occasions, seized me, 
and I sat down on the ground, powerless at the 



4-0 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

moment when Carlo most needed help. If I only 
could have got near enough, I would have put my 
foot on the freezer, and, taking hold of the dog's 
tail, dislodged him instantly ; but this I was not 
permitted to do. At this stage of the disaster my 
neighbor appeared with a look of consternation, 
her cap-strings flying in the cold wind. I tried to 
explain, but the aforesaid untimely hilarity hindered 
me. All I could do was to point at the flying 
freezer and the adjoining dog and ask her to call 
off her freezer, and, with assumed indignation, de- 
mand what she meant by trying to kill my grey- 
hound. 

The poor dog's every attempt at escape only 
wedged himself more thoroughly fast. But after 
a while, in time to save the dog, though not to 
save the ice-cream, my neighbor and myself 
effected a rescue. Edwin Landseer, the great 
painter of dogs and their friends, missed his best 
chance by not being there when the parishioner 
took hold of the freezer and the pastor seized the 
dog's tail, and, pulling mightily in opposite direc- 
tions, they each got possession of their own prop- 
erty. 

Carlo was cured of his love for luxuries, and the 
sight of a freezer on the back steps till the clay of 
his death would send him howling away. 

Carlo found, as many people have found, that it 



CARLO AND THE FREEZER. 43 

is easier to get into trouble than to get out. 
Nothing could be more delicious than while he 
was eating his way in, but what must have been 
his feelings when he found it impossible to get 
out ! While he was stealing the freezer the freez- 
er stole him. 

Lesson for dogs and men ! " Come in !" says 
the gray spider to the house-fly ; " I have enter- 
tained a great many flies. I have plenty of room, 
fine meals and a gay life. Walk on this suspension- 
bridge. Give me your hand. Come in, my sweet 
lady fly. These walls are covered with silk, and 
the tapestry is gobelin. I am a wonderful creature. 
I have eight eyes, and of course can see your best 
interest. Philosophers have written volumes about 
my antennae and cephalothorax." House-fly walks 
gently in. The web rocks like a cradle in the 
breeze. The house-fly feels honored to be the 
guest of such a big spider. W T e all have regard 
for big bugs. " But what is this ?" cries the fly, 
pointing to a broken wing, " and this fragment of 
an insect's foot. There must have been a murder 
here! Let me go back!" "Ha! ha!" says the 
spider, "the gate is locked, the drawbridge is up. 
I only contracted to bring you in. I cannot afford 
to let you out. Take a drop of this poison, and it 
will quiet your nerves. I throw this hook of a 
fang over your neck to keep you from falling off." 



44 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

Word went back to the house-fly's family, and a 
choir of great green- bottled insects sang this 
psalm at the funeral : 

" An toifortunate fly a-visiting went, 
And in a gossamer web found himself pent." 

The first five years of a dissipated life is com- 
paratively easy, for it is all down hill ; but when 
the man wakes up and finds his tongue wound 
with blasphemies, and his eyes swimming in rheum, 
and the antennae of vice feeling along his nerves, 
and the spiderish poison eating through his very 
life, and he resolves to return, he finds it hard 
traveling, for it is up hill, and the fortresses along 
the road open on him their batteries. We go into 
sin hop, skip and jump ; we come out of it creep- 
ing on all-fours. 

Let flies and dogs and men keep out of mischief. 
It is smooth all the way there, and rough all the 
way back. It is ice-cream for Carlo clear down to 
the bottom of the can, but afterward it is blinded 
eyes and sore neck and great fright. It is only 
eighteen inches to go into the freezer; it is three 
miles out. For Robert Burns it is rich wine and 
clapping hands and carnival all the way going to 
Edinburgh; but going back, it is worn-out body, and 
lost estate, and stin^inof conscience, and broken 
heart, and a drunkard's grave. 

Better moderate our desires. Carlo had that 



CARLO AND THE FREEZER. 45 

morning as good a breakfast as any dog need to 
have. It was a law of the household that he 
should be well fed. Had he been satisfied with 
bread and meat, all would have been well. But he 
sauntered out for luxuries. He wanted ice-cream. 
He got it, but brought upon his head the perils 
and damages of which I have written. As long- 
as we have reasonable wants we get on comfort- 
ably, but it is the struggle after luxuries that fills 
society with distress, and populates prisons, and 
sends hundreds of people stark mad. Dissatisfied 
with a plain house, and ordinary apparel, and re- 
spectable surroundings, they plunge their head into 
enterprises and speculations from which they have 
to sneak out in disgrace. Thousands of men have 
sacrificed honor and religion for luxuries, and died 
with the freezer about their ears. 

Young Catchem has one horse, but wants six. 
Lives in a nice house on Thirtieth street, but wants 
one on Madison Square. Has one beautiful wife, 
but wants four. Owns a hundred thousand dollars 
of Erie stock, but wants a million. Plunges his 
head into schemes of all sorts, eats his way to the 
bottom of the can till he cannot extricate himself, 
and constables, and sheriffs, and indignant society, 
which would have said nothing had he been sue- 
cessful, go to pounding him because he cannot get 
his head out. 

4* 



4 6 



AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 



Our poor old Carlo is dead now. We all cried 
when we found that he would never frisk again at 
our coming, nor put up his paw against us. But 
he lived long enough to preach the sermon about 
caution and contentment of which I have been the 
stenographer. 




CHAPTER VI. 

OLD GAMES REPEATED. 

TTTE tarried longer in the dining-room this 
\ V evening than usual, and the children, losing 
their interest in what we were saying, got to play- 
ing all about us in a very boisterous way, but we 
said nothing, for it is the evening hour, and I think 
it keeps one fresh to have these things going on 
around us. Indeed, we never get over being boys 
and girls. The good, healthy man sixty years of 
age is only a boy with added experience. A 
woman is only an old girl. Summer is but an 
older spring. August is May in its teens. We 
shall be useful in proportion as we keep young in 
our feelings. There is no use for fossils except in 
museums and on the shelf. I like young old folks. 
Indeed, we all keep doing over what we did in 
childhood. You thought that long ago you got 
through with " blind-man's-buff," and " hide-and- 
seek," and "puss in the corner," and "tick-tack- 
to," and " leap-frog," but all our lives are passed 
in playing those old games over again. 

You say, "What a racket those children make 



48 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

in the other room! When Squire Jones's boys 
come over to spend the evening with our children, 
it seems as if they would tear the house down." 
" Father, be patient !" the wife says ; " we once 
played ' blind - man's - buff' ourselves." Sure 
enough, father is playing it now, if he only knew 
it. Much of our time in life we go about blind- 
folded, stumbling over mistakes, trying to catch 
things that we miss, while people stand round the 
ring and titter, and break out with half-suppressed 
laughter, and push us ahead, and twitch the 
corner of our eye-bandage. After a while we ve- 
hemently clutch something with both hands, and 
announce to the world our capture ; the blindfold 
is taken from our eyes, and, amid the shouts of 
the surrounding spectators, we find we have, after 
all, caught the wrong thing. What is that but 
"blind-man's-buff" over again? 

You say, "Jenny and Harry, go to bed. It 
seems so silly for you to sit there making two par- 
allel lines perpendicular, and two parallel lines 
horizontal, and filling up the blanks with crosses 
and o's, and then crying out ' tick-tack-to.' " My 
dear man, you are doing every day in business 
just what your children are doing in the nursery. 
You find it hard to oret things into a line. You 
have started out for worldly success. You get 
one or two things fixed, but that is not what you 



OLD GAMES REPEATED. 49 

want After a while you have had two fine suc- 
cesses. You say, " If I can have a third success, 
I will come out ahead." But somebody is busy 
on the same slate, trying to hinder you getting the 
o-ame. You mark ; he marks. I think you will 
win. To the first and second success which you 
have already gained you add the third, for which 
you have long been seeking. The game is yours, 
and you clap your hands, and hunch your oppo- 
nent in the side, and shout, 

" Tick-tack-to, 
Three in a row." 

The funniest play that I ever joined in at school, 
and one that sets me a-laughing now as I think of 
it so I can hardly write, is " leap-frog." It is un- 
artistic and homely. It is so humiliating to the 
boy who bends himself over and puts his hands 
down on his knees, and it is so perilous to the 
boy who, placing his hands on the stooped shoul- 
ders, attempts to fly over. But I always preferred 
the risk of the one who attempted the leap rather 
than the humiliation of the one who consented to 
be vaulted over. It was often the case that we 
both failed in our part and we went down together. 
For this Jack Snyder carried a grudge against me 
and would not speak, because he said I pushed him 
down a-purpose. But I hope he has forgiven me 
by this time, for he has been out as a missionary. 



50 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

Indeed, if jack will come this way, I will rio-ht the 
wrong of olden time by stooping down in my 
study and letting him spring over me as my chil- 
dren do. 

Almost every autumn I see that old-time school- 
boy feat repeated. Mr. So-and-so says. "You 
make me crovernor and I will see that vou c r et to 
be senator. Make me mayor and I will see that 
vou become assessor. Get me the office of street- 
sweeper and you shall have one of the brooms. 
You stoop down and let me jump over you. and 
then I will stoop down and let you jump over me. 
Elect me deacon and you shall be trustee. You 
write a good thing about me and I will write a 
good thing about you." The day of election in 
Church or State arrives. A man once very up- 
right in his principles and policy begins to bend. 
You cannot understand it. He goes down lower 
and lower, until he ofets his hands awav down on 
his knees. Then a spry politician or ecclesiastic 
comes up behind him. puts his hand on the bowed 
strategist and springs clear over into some great 
position. Good thing to have so good a man in a 
prominent place. But after a while he himself 
begins to bend. Evervbodv savs. " What is the 
matter now? It cannot be possible that he is 
joiner down too." Oh ves ! Turn-about is fair 
play. Jack Snyder holds it against me to this 



OLD GAMES REPEATED. 51 

day, because, after he had stooped down to let me 
leap over him, 1 would not stoop down to let him 
leap over me. One half the strange things in 
Church and State may be accounted for by the 
fact that, ever since Adam bowed down so low as 
to let the race, putting its hands on him, fly over 
into ruin, there has been a universal and perpetual 
tendency to political and ecclesiastical " leap-frog." 
In one sense, life is a great " game of ball." We 
all choose sides and gather into denominational 
and political parties. We take our places on the 
ball-ground. Some are to pitch ; they are the 
radicals. Some are to catch ; they are the con- 
servatives. Some are to strike ; they are those 
fond of polemics and battle. Some are to run ; 
they are the candidates. There are four hunks — 
youth, manhood, old age and death. Some one 
takes the bat, lifts it and strikes for the prize and 
misses it, while the man who was behind catches it 
and goes in. This man takes his turn at the bat, 
sees the flying ball of success, takes good aim and 
strikes it high, amid the clapping of all the spec- 
tators. We all have a chance at the ball. Some 
of us run to all the four hunks, from youth to 
manhood, from manhood to old age, from old age 
to death. At the first hunk we bound with uncon- 
trollable mirth; coming to the second, we run with 
a slower but stronger tread ; coming to the third, 



52 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

our step is feeble ; coming to the fourth, our breath 
entirely gives out. We throw down the bat on the 
black hunk of death, and in the evening catchers 
and pitchers go home to find the family gathered 
and the food prepared. So may we all find the 
candles lighted, and the table set, and the old folks 
at home. 




CHAPTER VII. 

THE FULL-BLOODED COW. 

WE never had any one drop in about six 
o'clock p. m. whom we were more glad to 
see than Fielding, the Orange county farmer. In 
the first place, he always had a good appetite, and 
it did not make much difference what we had to 
eat. He would not nibble about the end of a 
piece of bread, undecided as to whether he had 
better take it, nor sit sipping his tea as though the 
doctor had ordered him to take only ten drops at 
a time mixed with a little su^ar and hot water. 
Perpetual contact with fresh air and the fields and 
the mountains gave him a healthy body, while the 
religion that he learned in the little church down 
by the mill-dam kept him in healthy spirits. Field- 
ing keeps a great drove of cattle and has an over- 
flowing dairy. As we handed him the cheese he 
said, " I really believe this is of my own making." 
"Fielding," I inquired, "how does your dairy 
thrive, and have you any new stock on your farm? 
Come, give us a little touch of the country." He 
gave me a mischievous look and said, "I will not 
tell you a word until you let me know all about 



54 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

that full-blooded cow, of which I have heard some- 
thing. You need not try to hide that story any 
longer." So we yielded to his coaxing. It was 
about like this: 

The man had not been able to pay his debts. 
The mortgage on the farm had been foreclosed. 
Day of sale had come. The sheriff stood on a 
box reading the terms of vendue. All payments 
to be made in six months, The auctioneer took 
his place. The old man and his wife and the 
children all cried as the piano, and the chairs, and 
the pictures, and the carpets, and the bedsteads 
went at half their worth. When the piano went, 
it seemed to the old people as if the sheriff were 
selling all the fingers that had ever played on it ; 
and when the carpets were struck off, I think 
father and mother thought of the little feet that 
had tramped it; and when the bedstead was sold, it 
brought to mind the bright curly heads that had 
slept on it long before the dark days had come, 
and father had put his name on the back of a note, 
signing his own death-warrant. The next thing 
to being buried alive is to have the sheriff sell you 
out when you have been honest and have tried 
alwavs to do ricrht. There are so manv envious 
ones to chuckle at your fall, and come in to buy 
your carriage, blessing the Lord that the time has 
come for vou to walk and for them to ride. 



THE 1LLL-BL00DED COW. 55 

But to us the auction reached its climax of in- 
terest when we went to the barn. We were 
spending our summers in the country, and must 
have a cow. There were ten or fifteen sukies to 
be sold. There were reds, and piebalds, and duns, 
and browns, and brindles, short horns, long horns, 
crumpled horns and no horns. But we marked 
for our own a cow that was said to be full-blooded, 
whether Alderney, or Durham, or Galloway, or 
Ayrshire, I will not tell lest some cattle-fancier feel 
insulted by what I say ; and if there is any grace 
that I pride myself on, it is prudence and a deter- 
mination always to say smooth things. " How 
much is bid for this magnificent, full-blooded cow ?" 
cried the auctioneer. "Seventy-five dollars," shout- 
ed some one. I made it eighty. He made it ninety. 
Somebody else quickly made it a hundred. After 
the bids had risen to one hundred and twenty-five 
dollars, I got animated, and resolved that I would 
have that cow if it took my last cent. "One hun- 
dred and forty dollars," shouted my opponent. 
The auctioneer said it was the finest cow he had 
ever sold ; and not knowing much about vendues, 
of course I believed him. It was a good deal of 
money for a minister to pay, but then I could get 
the whole matter off my hands by giving " a note." 
In utter defiance of everything I cried out, "One 
hundred and fifty dollars !" "Going at that," said 



56 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

the auctioneer. "Going at that! once! twice! 
three times! gone! Mr. Talmage has it." It was 
one of the proudest moments of our life. There 
she stood, tall, immense in the girth, horns branch- 
ing graceful as a tree-branch, full-uddered, silk- 
coated, pensive-eyed. 

We hired two boys to drive her home while we 
rode in a carriage. No sooner had we started 
than the cow showed what turned out to be one 
of her peculiarities, great speed of hoof. She left 
the boys, outran my horse, jumped the fence, 
frightened nearly to death a group of school-chil- 
dren, and by the time we got home we all felt as 
if we had all day been out on a fox-chase. 

We never had any peace with that cow. She 
knew more tricks than a juggler. She could let 
down any bars, open any gate, outrun any dog 
and ruin the patience of any minister. We had 
her a year, and yet she never got over wanting to 
go to the vendue. Once started out of the yard, 
she was bound to see the sheriff. We coaxed her 
with carrots, and apples, and cabbage, and sweet- 
est stalks, and the richest beverage of slops, but 
without avail. 

As a milker she was a failure. "Mike," who 
lived just back of our place, would come in at 
nights from his " Kerry cow," a scraggly runt that 
lived on the commons, with his pail so full he had 



THE flLL- BLOODED COW. 57 

to carry it cautiously lest it spill over. But after 
our full-blooded had been in clover to her eyes all 
day, Bridget would go out to the barn-yard, and 
tug and pull for a supply enough to make two or 
three custards. I said, " Bridget, you don't know 
how to milk. Let me try." I sat down by the 
cow, tried the full force of dynamics, but just at 
the moment when my success was about to be 
demonstrated, a sudden thought took her some- 
where between the horns, and she started for the 
vendue, with one stroke of her back foot upsetting 
the small treasure I had accumulated, and leaving 
me a mere wreck of what I once was. 

She had, among other bad things, a morbid ap- 
petite. Notwithstanding we gave her the richest 
herbaceous diet, she ate everything she could put 
her mouth on. She was fond of horse-blankets 
and articles of human clothing. I found her one 
day at the clothes-line, nearly choked to death, for 
she had swallowed one leg of something and 
seemed dissatisfied that she could not get down 
the other. The most perfect nuisance that I ever 
had about my place was that full-blooded. 

Having read in our agricultural journal of cows 
that were slaughtered yielding fourteen hundred 
pounds neat weight, we concluded to sell her to the 
butcher. We set a high price upon her and got 
it — that is, we took a note for it, which is the same 



58 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

thing. My bargain with the butcher was the only 
successful chapter in my bovine experiences. The 
only taking-off in the whole transaction was that 
the butcher ran away, leaving me nothing but a 
specimen of poor chirography, and I already had 
enough of that among my manuscripts. 

My friend, never depend on high-breeds. Some 
of the most useless of cattle had ancestors spoken 
of in the " Commentaries of Caesar." That Al- 
derney whose grandfather used to graze on a 
lord's park in England may not be worth the 
grass she eats. 

Do not depend too much on the high-sounding 
name of Durham or Devon. As with animals, so 
with men. Only one President ever had a Presi- 
dent for a son. Let every cow make her own 
name, and every man achieve his own position. 
It is no great credit to a fool that he had a wise 
grandfather. Many an Ayrshire and Hereford 
has had the hollow-horn and the foot-rot Both 
man and animal are valuable in proportion as 
they are useful. " Mike's " cow beat my full- 
blooded. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE DREGS IN LEA THERE A CATS' TEA-CUP. 

WE have an earlier tea this evening than usual, 
for we have a literary friend who comes 
about this time of the week, and he must go home 
to retire about eight o'clock. His nervous system 
is so weak that he must get three or four hours 
sleep before midnight ; otherwise he is next day 
so cross and censorious he scalps every author he 
can lay his hand on. As he put his hand on the 
table with an indelible blot of ink on his thumb 
and two fingers, which blot he had not been able to 
wash off, I said, "Well, my old friend Leatherbacks, 
what books have you been reading to-day ?" 

He replied, " I have been reading ' Men and 
Things.' Some books touch only the head and 
make us think ; other books touch only the heart 
and make us feel ; here and there one touches us 
under the fifth rib and makes us laugh; but the book 
on 'Men and Things,' by the Rev. Dr. C. S. Henry, 
touched me all over. I have felt better ever since. 
I have not seen the author but once since the old 
university days, when he lectured us and pruned 

59 



'-■: AROUND THE TEA- TABLE. 

us and advised us and did us more £Ood than almost 
any other instructor we ever had. Oh. those ere 
grand days! No better than the present, for life 
g rows brighter to me all the time ; but we shall not 
iorget the quaint, s:r: ng", brusque professor who so 
unceremoniously smashed things which he did not 
like, and shook the class with merriment or in- 
dignation. The widest awake professorial room 
in the land was Dr. Henrv's, in the New York 
University. But the participators in those scenes 
are all scattered. 1 know the whereabouts of but 
three or four. So we meet for a little while on 
earth, and then we separate. There must be a 
better place somewhere ahead of us. 

11 1 have also been looking over a book that over- 
hauls the theology and moral character of Abra- 
ham Lincoln. This is the onlv kind of slander 
that is safe. I have read all the stuff for the last 
three years published about Abraham Lincoln's 
unfair courtships and blank infidel:: The pro- 
tracted discussion has made only one impressicn 

on me. and that is this : How safe it is to slander 
a dead man ! You may say what you will in print 
about him. he brings no rebutting evidence. I 
have heard that ghosts do a great many things, 
but I never heard of one as printing a book or 
editing a newspaper to vindicate himself. Look 
out how vou vflifv a living man. for he mav re- 



THE DREGS IN LEA THE HB A CUTS' TEA-CUP. 6 1 

spond with pen, or tongue, or cowhide ; but only 
get a man thoroughly dead (that is, so certified by 
the coroner) and have a good, heavy tombstone 
put on the top of him, and then you may say what 
you will with impunity. 

11 But I have read somewhere in an old book that 
there is a day coming when all wrongs will be 
righted ; and I should not wonder if then the dead 
were vindicated, and all the swine who have up- 
rooted graveyards should, like their ancestors of 
Gadara, run down a steep place into the sea and 
get choked. The fact that there are now alive 
men so debauched of mind and soul that they re- 
joice in mauling the reputation of those who spent 
their lives in illustrious achievement for God and 
their country, and then died as martyrs for their 
principles, makes me believe in eternal damnation." 

With this last sentence my friend Leatherbacks 
gave a violent gesture that upset his cup and left 
the table-cloth sopping wet. 

" By the way," said he, " have you heard that 
Odger is coming?" 

" What !" said I. He continued without looking 
up, for he was at that moment running his knife, 
not over-sharp, through a lamb-chop made out of 
old sheep. (Wife, we will have to change our 
butcher!) He continued with a severity perhaps 
partly caused by the obstinacy of the meat: "I 



62 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

see in the Pali-Mall Budget the startling intelli- 
gence that Mr. Odger is coming to the United 
States on a lecturing expedition. Our American 
newspapers do not seem, as yet, to have got hold 
of this news, but the tidings will soon fly. and ereat 
excitement may be expected to follow." 

Some unwise person might ask the foolish 
question, "Who is Odger?" I hope, however, that 
such inquiry will not be made, for I would be com- 
pelled to say that I do not know. Whether he is 
a clergyman, or a reformer, or an author, or all 
these in one, we cannot say. Suffice it he is a 
foreigner, and that is enough to make us all go 
wild. A foreigner does not need more than half 
as much brain or heart to do twice as well as an 
American, either at preaching or lecturing. There 
is for many Americans a bewitchment in a foreign 
brogue. I do not know but that he mav have dined 
with the queen, or have a few drops of lordly 
blood distributed through his arteries. 

I notice, however, that much of this charm has 
been broken. I used to think that all English 
lords were talented, till I heard one of them make 
the only poor speech that was made at the opening 
meeting- of the Evangelical Alliance. Our lectur- 
ing committees would not pay very large prices 
next year for Mr. Bradlaugh and Edmund Yates. 
Indeed, we expect that the time will soon come 



THE DREGS IX LEA THER BACKS' TEACUP. 63 

when the same kind of balances will weigh Eng- 
lishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Frenchmen and 
Americans. 

If a man can do anything well, he will be ac- 
ceptable without reference to whether he was 
born by the Clyde, the Thames, the Seine or 
the Hudson. But until those scales be lifted it is 
sufficient to announce the joyful tidings that 
" Odger is coming." 




CHAPTER IX. 

THE HOT AXLE. 

THE express train was flying from Cork to 
Queenstown. It was going like sixty — that 
is, about sixty miles an hour. No sight of an Irish 
village to arrest our speed, no sign of break-down, 
and yet the train halted. We looked out of the 
window, saw the brakemen and a. crowd of pas- 
sengers o-atherinof around the locomotive and a 
dense smoke arising. What was the matter ? A 
hot axle ! 

We were on the lightning train for Cleveland. 
We had no time to spare. If we stopped for a 
half hour, we should be greeted by the anathema 
of a lecturing committee. We felt a sort of pre- 
sentiment that we should be too late, when to 
confirm it the whistle blew, and the brakes fell, 
and the cry all along the train was, " What is the 
matter?" Answer: A hot axle ! The wheels had 
been making too many revolutions in a minute. 
The car was on fire. It was a very difficult thing 
to put it out ; water, sand and swabs were tried, 
and caused long detention and a smoke that 
threatened flame down to the end of the journey. 

64 



TUB HOT AXLE. 65 

We thought then, and think now, this is what is 
the matter with people everywhere. In this swift, 
M express," American life, we go too fast for our 
endurance. We think ourselves getting on splen- 
didly, when in the midst of our successes we come 
to a dead halt. What is the matter ? Nerves or 
muscles or brains give out. We have made too 
many revolutions in an hour. A hot axle ! 

Men make the mistake of working according to 
their opportunities, and not according to their ca- 
pacity of endurance. "Can I run this train from 
Springfield to Boston at the rate of fifty miles an 
hour?" says an engineer. Yes. "Then I will run 
it, reckless of consequences." Can I be a mer- 
chant, and the president of a bank, and a director 
in a life insurance company, and a school commis- 
sioner, and help edit a paper, and supervise the 
politics of our ward, and run for Congress? "I 
can !" the man says to himself. The store drives 
him ; the school drives him ; politics drive him. 
He takes all the scoldings and frets and exasper- 
ations of each position. Some day at the height 
of the business season he does not come to the 
store ; from the most important meetings of the 
bank directors he is absent. In the excitements of 
the political canvass he fails to be at the place ap- 
pointed. What is the matter? His health has 



66 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

broken down. The train halts lone before it eets 
to the station. A hot axle ! 

Literary men have great opportunities opening 
in this day. If they take all that open, they are 
dead men, or worse, living men who ought to be 
dead. The pen runs so easy when you have good 
ink, and smooth paper, and an easy desk to write 
on, and the consciousness of an audience of one, 
two or three hundred thousand readers. There 
are the religious newspapers through which you 
preach, and the musical journals through which 
you may sing, and the agricultural periodicals 
through which you can plough, and family news- 
papers in which you may romp with the whole 
household around the evening stand. There are 
critiques to be written, and reviews to be indulged 
in, and poems to be chimed, and novels to be con- 
structed. When out of a man's pen he can shake 
recreation, and friendship, and usefulness, and 
bread, he is apt to keep it shaking. So great are 
the invitations to literary work that the professional 
men of the day are overcome. They sit faint and 
fagged out on the verge of newspapers and books. 
Each one does the work of three, and these men 
sit up late nights, and choke down chunks of meat 
without mastication, and scold their wives through 
irritability, and maul innocent authors, and run the 
physical machinery with a liver miserably given 



THE HOT AXLE. 6 J 

out. The driving shaft has gone fifty times a 
second. They stop at no station. The steam- 
chest is hot and swollen. The brain and the di- 
gestion begin to smoke. Stop, ye flying quills ! 
" Down brakes !" A hot axle ! 

Some of the worst tempered people of the day 
are religious people, from the fact that they have 
no rest. Added to the necessary work of the 
world, they superintend two Sunday-schools, listen 
to two sermons, and every night have meetings of 
charitable and Christian institutions. They look 
after the beggars, hold conventions, speak at meet- 
ings, wait on ministers, serve as committee-men, 
take all the hypercriticisms that inevitably come to 
earnest workers, rush up and down the world and 
develop their hearts at the expense of all the 
other functions. They are the best men on earth, 
and Satan knows it, and is trying to kill them as 
fast as possible. They know not that it is as much 
a duty to take care of their health as to go to the 
sacrament. It is as much a sin to commit suicide 
with the sword of truth as with a pistol. 

Our earthly life is a treasure to be guard- 
ed. It is an outrageous thing to die when we 
ought to live. There is no use in firing up a 
Cunarder to such a speed that the boiler bursts 
mid-Atlantic, when at a more moderate rate it 
might have reached the docks at Liverpool. It is 



68 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

a sin to try to do the work of thirty years in five 
years. 

A Rocky Mountain locomotive engineer told us 
that at certain places they changed locomotives 
and let the machine rest, as a locomotive always 
kept in full heat soon got out of order. Our ad- 
vice to all overworked good people is, "Slow up /" 
Slacken your speed as you come to the crossings. 
All your faculties for work at this rate will be con- 
sumed. You are on fire now — see the premon- 
itory smoke. A hot axle! 

Some of our young people have read till they 
are crazed of learned blacksmiths who at the foroe 

o 

conquered thirty languages, and of shoemakers 
who, pounding sole-leather, got to be philosophers, 
and of milliners who, while their customers were 
at the glass trying on their spring hats, wrote a 
volume of first-rate poems. The fact is no black- 
smith ought to be troubled with more than five 
languages ; and instead of shoemakers becoming 
philosophers, we would like to turn our surplus of 
philosophers into shoemakers ; and the supply of 
poetry is so much greater than the demand that 
we wish milliners would stick to their business. 
Extraordinary examples of work and endurance 
may do as much harm as good. Because Napoleon 
slept only three hours a night, hundreds of students 
have tried the experiment; but instead of Auster- 



THE HOT AX I.E. 69 

litz and Saragossa, there came of it only a sick 
headache and a botch of a recitation. We are 
told of how many books a man can read in the 
five spare minutes before breakfast, and the ten 
minutes at noon, but I wish some one could tell us 
how much rest a man can get in fifteen minutes 
after dinner, or how much health in an hour's 
horseback ride, or how much fun in a Saturday 
afternoon of cricket. He who has such an idea 
of the value of time that he takes none of it for 
rest wastes all his time. 

Most Americans do not take time for sufficient 
sleep. We account for our own extraordinary 
health by the fact that we are fanatics on the sub- 
ject of sleep. We differ from our friend Napoleon 
Bonaparte in one respect : we want nine hours' 
sleep, and we take it — eight hours at night and one 
hour in the day. If we miss our allowance one week, 
as we often do, we make it up the next week or 
the next month. We have sometimes been twenty- 
one hours in arrearages. We formerly kept a 
memorandum of the hours for sleep lost. We 
pursued those hours till we caught them. If at 
the beginning of our summer vacation we are 
many hours behind in slumber, we go down to the 
sea-shore or among the mountains and sleep a 
month. If the world abuses us at any time, we go 
and take an extra sleep ; and when we wake up, all 



/O AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

the world is smiling n us. If we come to a 
knotty point in our discourse, we take a sleep ; and 
when we open our eyes, the opaque has become 
transparent. We split every day in two by a nap 
in the afternoon. Going to take that somniferous 
interstice, we say to the servants, " Do not call me 
for anything. If the house takes fire, first get the 
children out and my private papers ; and when the 
roof begins to fall in call me." Through such fa- 
naticism we have thus far escaped the hot axle. 

Somebody ought to be congratulated — I do not 
know who, and so I will shake hands all around — 
on the fact that the health of the country seems 
improving. Whether Dio Lewis, with his gymnas- 
tic clubs, has pounded to death American sickness, 
or whether the coming here of many English ladies 
with their magnificent pedestrian habits, or whether 
the medicines in the apothecary shops through 
much adulteration have lost their force, or wheth- 
er the multiplication of bath-tubs has induced to 
cleanliness people who were never washed but 
once, and that just after their arrival on this planet, 
I cannot say. But sure I am that I never saw so 
many bright, healthy-faced people as of late. 

Our maidens have lost the languor they once 
cultivated, and walk the street with stout step, and 
swing the croquet mallet with a force that sends 
the ball through two arches, cracking the opposing 



THE HOT AXLE. /I 

ball with great emphasis. Our daughters are not 
ashamed to culture flower-beds, and while they 
plant the rose in the ground a corresponding rose 
blooms in their own cheek. 

But we need another proclamation of emancipa- 
tion. The human locomotive goes too fast. Cyl- 
inder, driving-boxes, rock-shaft, truck and valve- 
gear need to " slow up." Oh that some strong 
hand would unloose the burdens from our over- 
tasked American life, that there might be fewer 
bent shoulders, and pale cheeks, and exhausted 
lungs, and quenched eyes, the law, and medicine, 
and theology less frequently stopped in their glori- 
ous progress, because of the hot axle ! 




CHAPTER X. 

BEEFSTEAK FOR MINISTERS. 

THERE have been lately several elaborate 
articles remarking upon what they call the 
lack of force and fire in the clerev. The world 
wonders that, with such a rousing theme as the 
gospel, and with such a grand work as saving 
souls, the ministry should ever be nerveless. 
Some ascribe it to lack of piety, and some to tim- 
idity of temperament. We believe that in a great 
number of cases it is from the lack of nourishing 
food. Many of the clerical brotherhood are on 
low diet. After jackets and sacks have been pro- 
vided for the eight or ten children of the parson- 
age, the father and mother must watch the table 
with severest economy. Coming in suddenly 
upon the dinner-hour of the country clergyman, 
the housewife apologizes for what she calls " a 
picked-up " dinner, when, alas ! it is nearly always 
picked up. 

Congregations sometimes mourn over dull 
preaching when themselves are to blame. Give 
your minister more beefsteak and he will have 
more fire. Xext to the divine unction, the minister 



BEEFSTEAK FOR MINISTERS. 7$ 

needs blood ; and he cannot make that out of 
touo-h leather. One reason why the apostles 
preached so powerfully was that they had healthy 
food. Fish was cheap along Galilee, and this, with 
unbolted bread, gave them plenty of phosphorus 
for brain- food. These early ministers were never 
invited out to late suppers, with chicken salad and 
doughnuts. Nobody ever embroidered slippers 
for the big foot of Simon Peter, the fisherman 
preacher. Tea-parties, with hot waffies, at ten 
o'clock at night, make namby-pamby ministers ; 
but good hours and substantial diet, that furnish 
nitrates for the muscle, and phosphates for the 
brain, and carbonates for the whole frame, prepare 
a man for effective work. When the water is low, 
the mill-wheel goes slow ; but a full race, and how 
fast the grists are ground ! In a man the arteries 
are the mill-race and the brain the wheel, and the 
practical work of life is the grist ground. The 
reason our soldiers failed in some of the battles 
was because their stomachs had for several days 
been innocent of everything but " hard-tack." See 
that your minister has a full haversack. Feed him 
on gruel during the week and on Sunday he will 
give you gruel. What is called the " parson's 
nose" in a turkey or fowl is an allegory setting 
forth that in many communities the minister comes 
out behind. 



74 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

Ei^ht hundred or a thousand dollars for a min- 
ister is only a slow way of killing him, and is the 
worst style of homicide. Why do not the trustees 
and elders take a mallet or an axe, and with one 
blow put him out of his misery ? 

The damage bemns in the college boarding- 
house. The theological student has generally 
small means, and he must go to a cheap boarding- 
house. A frail piece of sausage trying to swim 
across a river of gravy on the breakfast plate, but 
drowned at last, "the linked sweetness long 
drawn out" of files in the molasses cup, the gristle 
of a tough ox, and measly biscuit, and buckwheat 
cakes tough as the cook's apron, and old peas in 
which the bugs lost their life before they had time 
to escape from the saucepan, and stale cucumbers 
cut up into small slices of cholera morbus, — are the 
provender out of which we are trying at Princeton 
and Yale and New Brunswick to make sons of 
thunder. Sons of mush! From such depletion 
we step gasping into the pulpit, and look so 
heavenly pale that the mothers in Israel are afraid 
we will evaporate before we get through our first 
sermon. 

Many of our best young men in preparation for 
the ministrv are ^oinof through this martvrdom. 
The strongest mind in our theological class per- 
ished, the doctors said afterward from lack of food. 



BEEFSTEAK FOR MINISTERS. 75 

The only time he could afford a doctor was for his 
post-mortem examination. 

I give the financial condition of many of our 
young theological students when I say — 

Income $250 00 

Outgo : 

Board at $3 per week (cheap place) 156 00 

Clothing (shoddy) 100 00 

Books (no morocco) 25 00 

Traveling expenses 20 00 



#301 00 

Here you see a deficit of fifty-one dollars. As 
there are no " stealings " in a theological seminary, 
he makes up the balance by selling books or teach- 
ing school. He comes into life cowed down, with 
a patch on both knees and several other places, 
and a hat that has been "done over" four or five 
times, and so weak that the first sharp wind that 
whistles round the corner blows him into glory. 
The inertness you complain of in the ministry 
starts early. Do you suppose that if Paul had 
spent seven years in a cheap boarding-house, and 
the years after in a poorly-supplied parsonage, he 
would have made Felix tremble ? No ! The first 
glance of the Roman procurator would have made 
him apologize for intrusion. 

Do not think that all vour ei^ht-hundred-dollar 
minister needs is a Christmas present of an el- 
egantly-bound copy of " Calvin's Institutes." He 



76 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

is sound already on the doctrine of election, and 
it is a poor consolation if in this way you remind 
him that he has been foreordained to starve to 
death. Keep your minister on artichokes and 
purslain, and he will be fit to jDreach nothing but 
funeral sermons from the text "All flesh is grass/' 
While feeling most of all our need of the life that 
comes from above, let us not ignore the fact that 
manv of the cler^v to-day need more gymnastics, 
more fresh air, more nutritious food. Prayer can- 
not do the work of beefsteak. You cannot keep 
a hot fire in the furnace with poor fuel and the 
damper turned. 




CHAPTER XI. 

SHOOTING PORPOISES. 

BANG, bang ! went the gun at the side of the 
San Jacinto, after we had been two days out 
at sea on the way to Savannah. We were startled 
at such a strange sound on shipboard, and asked: 

"What are they doing?" 

A few innocents of the deep, for the purpose of 
breathing or sport, had lifted themselves above the 
wave, and a gentleman found amusement in tick- 
ling them with shot. As the porpoise rolled over 
wounded, and its blood colored the wave, the gun- 
ner was congratulated by his comrades on the ex- 
ecution made. 

It may have been natural dullness that kept us 
from appreciating the grandeur of the deed. Had 
the porpoise impeded the march of the San Jacinto, 
I would have said : 

" Dose it with lead !" 

If there had been a possibility that by coming up 
to breathe it would endanger our own supply of 
air, I would have said : 

" Save the passengers and kill the dolphins !" 

7 77 



/ 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

If the marksman had harpooned a whale, there 
would have been the oil for use, or had struck 
down a gull, in its anatomy he might have ad- 
vanced science. If he had gunpowdered the 
cook, it might, in small quantities, have made him 
animated ; or the stewardess, there would have 
been the fun of seeing her jump. But alas for 
the cruel disposition of the man who could shoot 
a porpoise ! 

There is no need that we go to sea to find the 
same style of gunning. 

After tea the parlor is full of romp. The chil- 
dren are playing " Ugly Mug," and " Mrs. Wig- 
gins," and " Stage Coach," and " Bear," and 
"Tag," and "Yonder stands a lovely creature." 
Papa goes in among the playing dolphins with the 
splash and dignity of a San Jacinto. He cries, 
"Jim, get my slippers!" "Mary, roll up the 
stand!" "Jane, get me the evening newspaper!" 
" Sophia, go to bed !" " Harry, quit that snicker !" 
" Stop that confounded noise, all of you !" The 
fun is over. The waters are quiet. The dolphins 
have turned their last somersault. Instead of 
getting down on his hands and knees, and being as 
lively a " bear " as any of them, he goes to shoot- 
ing porpoises. 

Here is a large school of famous pretension 
— professors high-salaried, apparatus complete, 



SHOOTING POR POISES. 8 1 

o lobes on which you can travel round the world 
in five minutes, spectroscopes, and Leyden jars, 
and chromatropes, and electric batteries. No one 
disputes its influence or its well-earned fame. 
The masters and misses that graduate come out 
equipped for duty. Long may it stand the adorn- 
ment of the town. But a widow whose sons were 
killed in the war opens a school in her basement. 
She has a small group of children whose tuition is 
her subsistence. The high school looks with sharp 
eyes on the rising up of the low school. The big 
institution has no respect for little institutions. 
The parents patronizing the widow must be per- 
suaded that they are wasting their children's time 
in that basement. Women have no right to be 
widows or have their sons killed in the war. From 
the windows of the high school the arrows are 
pointed at the helpless establishment in the corner. 
" Bang !" goes the artillery of scorn till one of the 
widow's scholars has gone. " Bang !" go the guns 
from the deck of the great educational craft till the 
innovating institution turns over and disappears. 
Well done ! Used it up quick ! Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
SJwoting porpoises ! 

Grab, Chokeham & Co. have a large store. 
They sell more goods than any in town. They 
bracr over their income and the size of the elass J n 
their show-window. They have enough clerks on 



82 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

tight salaries to man a small navv. Mr. Xeed- 
ham, an honest man with small capital, opens a 
store in the same business. One morning Mr. 
Grab says to his partner, Mr. Chokeham : 

" Do you know a young chap has opened a store 
down on the other end of this block in the same 
business ?" 

" Has, eh? We will settle him very speedily.'' 

Forthwith it is understood that if at the small 
store a thing is sold for fifty cents, at the large 
store you can get it for thirty-five. That is less 
than cost, but Grab & Chokeham are an old house, 
and can stand it, and Xeedham cannot. Small 
store's stock of goods is getting low, and no money 
to replenish. Small store's rent is due, and noth- 
ing with which to pay it. One day small store is 
crowded with customers, but they have come to 
the sheriff's sale. The big fish has swallowed the 
little one. Grab & Chokeham roll on the floor of 
the counting-room in excess of merriment. Xeed- 
ham goes home to cry his eyes out. Big store had 
put an end to small store. Plenty of room for 
both, but the former wanted all the sea to itself. 
Xo one had anv ricrht to show his commercial head 
in those waters. "Pop!" " Pop !" Shooting por- 
poises ! 

The first church of the village has a lar^e con- 
gregation and a good minister. Xeither pastor 



SHOOTING PORPOISES. 83 

nor people have ever been excited about anything 
save once, when a resident of the city moved into 
the village and tried to distract the church by sug- 
gesting a young people's prayer-meeting ; but the 
officials formed themselves into a line, as at a fire, 
and passed buckets of cold water till the danger 
was put out. 

They did not seem to know that Fort Sumter 
had been fired on till after General Lee's surren- 
der. About the last item of fresh news they 
seemed to have heard was that Moses slew an 
Egyptian, but they said not much about that for the 
reason that they did not want to commit them- 
selves, or spoke of it in such a guarded way that 
if they wanted to change sides on the question 
they could do so without sacrificing their manli- 
ness. The last church that Rip Van Winkle at- 
tended before getting drowsy was that. On the 
day he left they were asleep, and when he woke 
up they were asleep yet. The dominie has not 
prepared a new sermon for ten years. The paper 
is very yellow — a color he prefers, since it looks 
like the parchment on which the Scriptures were 
originally written. The same Thanksgiving dis- 
course does for every year with this slight change : 
He has two slips of paper, one marked A, the 
other B. If it has been a prosperous year, then 
on Thanksgiving day he uses the slip marked A ; 



5 4 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

but if the corn and potatoes have been poor, he 
uses the slip B. Everything in that church is com- 
fortable, fat and easy. But a few good men. want- 
ing a little more life, build a second church and 
call a devoted minister. Their means are small 
and the times hard. The old minister does not 
like the new one. and takes even* opportunity* of 
keeping him humble. Old minister goes around 
one afternoon to hear new minister, wh: is of 
course, embarrassed, and does not do as well as 
usual, and nearly breaks down in the sermon. Old 
minister looks mortified, puts his head down on the 
pew in front to hide his embarrassment, and goes 
home wondering how any people can stand such 
preaching. 

The Second Church finallv £oes down. It had 
been under a broadside fire ever since the day it 
was dedicated. There was room for two — yea. for 
:: .r — relio-ious societies, but Firs: Church did not 
think so. Ofttimes was the experiment tried again, 
but no sooner did a Methodist, or Bapris:. or Epis- 
: : oal head lift above the water than there came 
from the old-established meeting-house of the 
place a volley of anathemas. Indeed, for the last 
twenty years the pastor and people have given 
themselves up to shooting porpoi: 

Is it not time that the world stopped wasting its 
ammunition? If vou want to shoot, there is the 



SHOOTING PORPOISES. JS 5 

fox of cruel cunning, and the porcupine of fretful- 
ness, and the vulture of filth, and the weasel of 
meanness, and the bear of religious grumbling. 
Oh for more hunters who can " draw a bead " so 
as every time to send plump into the dust a folly 
or a sin ! But let alone the innocent things of land 
and deep. The world is wide enough for us all. 

Big newspapers, have mercy on the little. Great 
merchants, spare the weak. Let the San Jacinto 
plow on its majestic way and pass unhurt the por- 
poises. 




CHAPTER XII. 

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN OLD PAIR OF SCISSORS. 

I WAS born in Sheffield, England, at the close 
of the last century, and was, like all those who 
study Brown's Shorter Catechism, made out of 
dust. My father was killed at Herculaneum at 
the time of the accident there, and buried with 
other scissors and knives and hooks and swords. 
On my mother's side I am descended from a pair 
of shears that came to England during the Ro- 
man invasion. My cousin hung to the belt of a 
duchess. My uncle belonged to Hampton Court, 
and used to trim the kind's hair. I came to the 
United States while the grandfathers of the pres- 
ent generation of children were boys. 

When I was young I was a gay fellow — indeed, 
what might have been called "a perfect blade.'' I 
look old and rusty hanging here on the nail, but 
take me down, and though my voice is a little 
squeaky with old age, I can tell you a pretty tale. 
I am sharper than I look. Old scissors know more 
than you think. They say I am a little garrulous, 
and perhaps 1 may tell things I ought not. 

86 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN OLD PAIR OF SCISSORS. 8/ 

I helped your grandmother prepare for her 
wedding. I cut out and fitted all the apparel of 
that happy day. I hear her scold the young folks 
now for being so dressy, but I can tell you she 
was once that way herself. Did not I, sixty years 
aeo, lie on the shelf and laus'h as I saw her stand 
by the half hour before the glass, giving an extra 
twist to her curl and an additional dash of white 
powder on her hair — now fretted because the pow- 
der was too thick, now fretted because it was too 
thin? She was as proud in cambric and calico and 
nankeen as Harriet is to-day in white tulle and or- 
gandy. I remember how careful she was when 
she ran me alonof the ed^es of the new dress. 
With me she clipped and notched and gored and 
trimmed, and day and night I went click ! click ! 
click ! and it seemed as if she would never let me 
rest from cutting. 

I split the rags for the first carpet on the old 
homestead, and what a merry time we had when 
the neighbors came to " the quilting" ! I lay on 
the coverlet that was stretched across the quilting- 
frame and heard all the gossip of 1799. Reputa- 
tions were ripped and torn just as they are now. 
Fashions were chattered about, the coal-scuttle 
bonnet of some offensive neighbor (who was not 
invited to the quilting) was criticised, and the sus- 
picion started that she laced too tight ; and an old 



88 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

man who happened to have the best farm in the 
county was overhauled for the size of his knee- 
buckles, and the exorbitant ruffles on his shirt, and 
the costly silk lace to his hat. I lay so still that no 
one supposed I was listening. I trembled on the 
coverlet with rage and wished that I could clip 
the end of their tattling tongues, but found no 
chance for revenge, till, in the hand of a careless 
neighbor, I notched and nearly spoiled the patch- 
work. 

Yes, I am a pair of old scissors. I cut out many 
a profile of old-time faces, and the white dimity 
bed-curtains. I lay on the stand when your grand- 
parents were courting — for that had to be done 
then as well as now — and it was the same story 
of chairs wide apart, and chairs coming nearer, 
and arm over the back of the chair, and late hours, 
and four or five gettings up to go with the deter- 
mination to stay, protracted interviews on the front 
steps, blushes and kisses. Your great-grand- 
mother, out of patience at the lateness of the 
hour, shouted over the banisters to your immediate 
grandmother, " Mary ! come to bed !" Because 
the old people sit in the corner looking so very 
grave, do not suppose their eyes were never 
roguish, nor their lips ruby, nor their hair flaxen, 
nor their feet spry, nor that they always retired at 
half-past eight o'clock at night. After a while, I, 



ALIO BIOGRAPHY OF AX OLD PAIR OP SCISSORS. 89 

the scissors, was laid on the shelf, and finally thrown 
into a box among- nails and screws and files. Years 
of darkness and disgrace for a scissors so highly 
born as I. But one day I was hauled out. A bell 
tinkled in the street. An Italian scissors-grinder 
wanted a job. I was put upon the stone, and the 
grinder put his foot upon the treadle, and the bands 
pulled, and the wheel sped, and the fire flew, and 
it seemed as if, in the heat and pressure and agony, 
I should die. I was ground, and rubbed, and oiled, 
and polished, till I glittered in the sun ; and one 
day, when young Harriet was preparing for the 
season, I plunged into the fray. I almost lost my 
senses among the ribbons, and flew up and down 
among the flounces, and went mad amongst the 
basques. I move round as gay as when I was 
young ; and modern scissors, with their stumpy 
ends, and loose pivots, and weak blades, and glar- 
ing bows, and coarse shanks, are stupid beside an 
old family piece like me. You would be surprised 
how spry I am flying around the sewing- room, cut- 
ting corsage into heart-shape, and slitting a place 
for button-holes, and making double-breasted jack- 
ets, and hollowing scallops, and putting the last 
touches on velvet arabesques and Worth over- 
skirts. I feel almost as well at eighty years of 
age as at ten, and I lie down to sleep at night amid 
all the fineries of the wardrobe, on olive-green 



90 AROUND THE TEA- TABLE. 

cashmere, and beside pannier puffs, and pillowed 
on feathers of ostrich. 

Oh what a gay life the scissors live ! I may lie 
on gayest lady's lap, and little children like me 
better than almost anything else to play with. The 
trembling octogenarian takes me by the hand, and 
the rollicking four-year-old puts on me his dimpled 
fingers. Mine are the children's curls and the 
bride's veil. I am welcomed to the Christmas- 
tree, and the sewing-machine, and the editor's 
table. I have cut my way through the ages. Be- 
side pen, and sword, and needle, I dare to stand 
anywhere, indispensable to the race, the world-re- 
nowned scissors ! 

But I had a sad mission once. The bell tolled 
in the New-England village because a soul had 
passed. I sat up all the night cutting the pattern 
for a shroud. Oh, it was gloomy work. There 
was wailing in the house, but I could not stop to 
mourn. I had often made the swaddling-clothes 
for a child, but that was the only time I fashioned 
a robe for the grave. To fit it around the little 
neck, and make the sleeves just long enough for 
the quiet arms — it hurt me more than the tilt- 
hammers that smote me in Sheffield, than the files 
of the scissors-grinder at the door. I heard heart- 
strings snap as I went through the linen, and in 
the white pleats to be folded over the still heart I 



AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN OLD PAIR OF SCISSORS. 9 1 

saw the snow banked on a orave. Give me, the 
old scissors, fifty bridal dresses to make rather 
than one shroud to prepare. 

I never recovered from the chill of those dismal 
days, but at the end of life I can look back and 
feel that I have done my work well. Other scis- 
sors have frayed and unraveled the garments they 
touched, but I have always made a clean path 
through the linen or the damask I was called to 
divide. Others screeched complainingly at their 
toil ; I smoothly worked my jaws. Many of the 
fingers that wrought with me have ceased to open 
and shut, and my own time will soon come to die, 
and I shall be buried in a grave of rust amid cast- 
off tenpenny-nails and horseshoes. But I have 
stayed long enough to testify, first, that these days 
are no worse than the old ones, the granddaughter 
now no more proud than the grandmother was ; 
secondly, that we all need to be hammered and 
ground in order to take off the rust ; and thirdly, 
that an old scissors, as well as an old man, may be 
scoured up and made practically useful. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

A LLE, ZOOLOGICALLY COXSIDERED. 

IT ^E stand agape in the British Museum, look- 
V \ ing at the monstrous skeletons of the mas- 
todon, megatherium and iguanodon, and conclude 
that all the great animals thirty feet long and 
eleven feet high are extinct. 

Now, while we do not want to frighten children 
or disturb nervous people, we have to say that the 
other day we caught a glimpse of a monster be- 
side which the lizards of the saurian era were 
short, and the elephants of the mammalian period 
were insignificant. We saw it in full spring, and 
on the track of its prey. Children would call the 
creature "a fib;" rough persons would term it "a 
whopper;" polite folks would say it was "a fabri- 
cation ;" but plain and unscientific people would 
style it a lie. Naturalists might assign it to the 
species Tigris rcgalis or Felis pardus* 

We do not think that anatomical and zoological 

92 



./ LIE, ZOOLOGICALLY COXSIDERED. 93 

justice lias been done to the lie. It is to be found 
in all zones. Livingstone saw it in Central Africa; 
Dr. Kane found it on an iceberg, beside a polar 
bear; Aeassiz discovered it in Brazil. It thrives 
about as well in one clime as another, with per- 
haps a little preference for the temperate zone. 
It lives on berries or bananas or corn or grapes 
or artichokes ; drinks water or alcohol or tea. It 
eats up a great many children, and would have de- 
stroyed the boy who afterward became the father 
of his country had he not driven it back with his 
hatchet. (See the last two hundred Sunday-school 
addresses.) 

The first peculiarity of this Tigris regalis or 
Felts pardus, commonly called a lie, is its 

Longevity. 

If it once get born, it lives on almost intermin- 
ably. Sometimes it has followed a man for ten, 
twenty or forty years, and has been as healthy in 
its last leap as in the first. It has run at every 
President from General Washington to General 
Grant, and helped kill Horace Greeley. It has 
barked at every good man since Adam, and every 
good woman since Eve, and every good boy since 
Abel, and every good cow since Pharaoh's lean 
kine. Malarias do not poison it, nor fires burn it, 
nor winters freeze it. Just now it is after your 



94 AROUND THE TEA TABLE. 

neighbor; to-morrow it will be after you. It is the 
healthiest of all monsters. Its tooth knocks out 
the " tooth of time." Its hair never turns white 
with age, nor does it limp with decrepitude. It is 
distinguished for its longevity. 

The Length of its Legs. 

It keeps up with the express train, and is pres- 
ent at the opening and the shutting of the mail- 
bags. It takes a morning run from New York to 
San Francisco or over to London before break- 
fast. It can go a thousand miles at a jump. It 
would despise seven-league boots as tedious. A 
telegraph-pole is just knee-high to this monster, 
and from that you can judge its speed of locomo- 
tion. It never gets out of wind, carries a bag of 
reputations made up in cold hash, so that it does 
not have to stop for victuals. It goes so fast that 
sometimes five million people have seen it the 
same morning. 

Keenness of Nostril, 

It can smell a moral imperfection fifty miles 
away. The crow has no faculty compared with 
this for finding carrion. It has scented something 
a hundred miles off, and before night " treed " its 
game. It has a great genius for smelling. It can 
find more than is actually there. When it begins 



A Lit, ZOOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 95 

to snuff the air, you had better look out. It has 
great length and breadth and depth and height of 
nose. 

Aeuteness of Ear. 

The rabbit has no such power to listen as this 
creature we speak of. It hears all the sounds that 
come from five thousand keyholes. It catches a 
whisper from the other side the room, and can un- 
derstand the scratch of a pen. It has one ear 
open toward the east and the other toward the 
west, and hears everything in both directions. All 
the tittle-tattle of the world pours into those ears 
like vinegar through a funnel. They are always 
up and open, and to them a meeting of the sew- 
ing-society is a jubilee and a political campaign is 
heaven. 

Si&e of Throat. 

The snake has hard work to choke down a toad, 
and the crocodile has a mighty struggle to take in 
the calf; but the monster of which I speak can 
swallow anything. It has a throat bigger than the 
whale that took down the minister who declined 
the call to Nineveh, and has swallowed whole pres- 
byteries and conferences of clergymen. A Brob- 
dingnagian goes down as easily as a Liliputian. 
The largest story about business dishonor, or fe- 
male frailty, or political deception, slips through 

5- 



9_6 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

with the ease of a homoeopathic pellet. Its throat 
is sufficient for anything round, or square, or an- 
gular, or octagonal. Nothing in all the earth is 
too big for its mastication and digestion save the 
truth, and that will stick in its gullet. 

It is Gregarious. 

It goes in a flock with others of its kind. If 
one takes after a man or woman, there are at least 
ten in its company. As soon as anything bad is 
charged against a man, there are many others who 
know things just as deleterious. Lies about him- 
self, lies about his wife, lies about his children, lies 
about his associates, lies about his house, lies about 
his barn, lies about his store — swarms of them, 
broods of them, herds of them. Kill one of them, 
and there will be twelve alive to act as its pall- 
bearers, another to preach its funeral sermon, and 
still another to write its obituary. 

These monsters beat all the extinct species. 
They are white, spotted and black. They have a 
sleek hide, a .sharp claw and a sting in their tail. 
They prowl through every street of the city, 
craunch in the restaurants, sleep in the hall of 
Congress, and in grandest parlor have one paw 
under the piano, another under the sofa, one by 
the mantel and the other on the door-sill. 

Now, many people spend half their time in 



A LIE, ZOOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. 07 

hunting lies. You see a man rushing anxiously 
about to correct a newspaper paragraph, or a hus- 
band, with fist clenched, on the way to pound some 
one who has told a false thing about his wife. 
There is a woman on the next street who heard, 
last Monday, a falsehood about her husband, and 
has had her hat and shawl on ever since in the 
effort to correct wrong impressions. Our object 
in this zoological sketch of a lie is to persuade 
you of the folly of such a hunting excursion. If 
these monsters have such long legs, and go a hun- 
dred miles at a jump, you might as well give up 
the chase. If they have such keenness of nostril, 
they can smell you across the State, and get out 
of your way. If they have such long ears, they 
can hear the hunter's first step in the woods. If 
they have such great throats, they can swallow 
you at a gape. If they are gregarious, while you 
shoot one, forty will run upon you like mad buffa- 
loes, and trample you to death. Arrows bound 
back from their thick hide ; and as for gunpowder, 
they use it regularly for pinches of snuff. After 
a shower of bullets has struck their side, they lift 
their hind foot to scratch the place, supposing a 
black fly has been biting. Henry the Eighth, in a 
hawking-party, on foot, attempted to leap a ditch 
in Hertfordshire, and with his immense avoirdu- 
pois weight went splashing into the mud and slime, 



98 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

and was hauled out by his footman half dead. 
And that is the fate of men who spend their time 
hunting for lies. Better go to your work, and let 
the lies run. Their bloody muzzles have tough 
work with a man usefully busy. You cannot so 
easily overcome them with sharp retort as with 
adze and yardstick. All the bowlings of Califor- 
nian wolves at night do not stop the sun from 
kindling victorious morn on the Sierra Xevadas, 
and all the ravenino-s of defamation and revenue 
cannot hinder the resplendent dawn of heaven on 
a righteous soul. 

But thev who spend their time in trvinofto lasso 
and decapitate a lie will come back worsted, as did 
the English cocknevs from a fox-chase described 
in the poem entitled "Pills to Purge Melancholy:" 

"And when they had done their sport, they came to London, where they 
dwell. 
Their faces all so torn and scratched their "wives scarce knew them well; 
For 'tzvas a very great mercy so many * scaped alive, 
For of twenty saddles carried out, they brought again but five:' 



l5P? 



w&gn%» 




CHAPTER XIV. 

A BREATH OF EXGLISH AIR. 

Y friend looked white as the wall, flung the 
London Times half across the room, kicked 
one slipper into the air and shouted, "Talmage, 
where on earth did you come from ?" as this sum- 
mer I stepped into his English home. "Just come 
over the ferry to dine with you," I responded. 
After some explanation about the health of my 
family, which demanded a sea-voyage, and thus 
necessitated my coming, we planned two or three 
excursions. 

At eight o'clock in the morning we gathered in 
the parlor in the " Red Horse Hotel" at Stratford- 
on -Avon. Two pictures of Washington Irving, 
the chair in which the father of American Litera- 
ture sat, and the table on which he wrote, immor- 
talizing his visit to that hotel, adorn the room. 
From thence we sallied forth to see the clean, 
quaint village of Stratford. It was built just to 
have Shakspeare born in. We have not heard 
that there was any one else ever born there, before 
or since. If, by any strange possibility, it could be 

99 



lOO AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

proved that the great dramatist was born any- 
where else, it would ruin all the cab-drivers, guides 
and hostelries of the place. 

We went of course to the house where Shak- 
speare first appeared on the stage of life, and en- 
acted the first act of his first play. Scene the first. 
Enter John Shakspeare, the father ; Mrs. Shak- 
speare, the mother, and the old nurse, with young 
William. 

A very plain house it is. Like the lark, which 
soars highest, but builds its nest lowest, so with 
genius ; it has humble beginnings. I think ten 
thousand dollars would be a large appraisement 
for all the houses where the great poets were 
born. But all the world comes to this lowly 
dwelling. Walter Scott was glad to scratch his 
name on the window, and you may see it now. 
Charles Dickens, Edmund Kean, Albert Smith, 
Mark Lemon and Tennyson, so very sparing of 
their autographs, have left their signatures on the 
wall. There are the jambs of the old fireplace 
where the poet warmed himself and combed wool, 
and beean to think for all time. Here is the chair 
in which he sat while presiding at the club, forming 
habits of drink which killed him at the last, his 
own life ending in a tragedy as terrible as any he 
ever wrote. Exeunt wine-bibbers, topers, grog- 
shop keepers, Drayton, Ben Jonson and William 



A BREATH OF ENGLISH AIR. IOI 

Shakspeare. Here also is the letter which Rich- 
ard Quyney sent to Shakspeare, asking to borrow 
/30. I hope he did not loan it ; for if he did, it 
was a dead loss. 

We went to the church where the poet is buried. 
It dates back seven hundred years, but has been 
often restored. It has many pictures, and is the 
sleeping-place of many distinguished dead; but 
one tomb within the chancel absorbs all the atten- 
tion of the stranger. For hundreds of years the 
world has looked upon the unadorned stone lying 
flat over the dust of William Shakspeare, and 
read the epitaph written by himself: 

" Good friend, for Jesus' sake for bear e 
To dig the dust enclosed here ; 
Bleste be ye man yt spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones, ," 

Under such anathema the body has slept 
securely. A sexton once looked in at the bones, 
but did not dare to touch them, lest his "quietus" 
should be made with a bare bodkin. 

From the church door we mounted our carriage ; 
and crossing the Avon on a bridge which the lord 
mayor of London built four hundred years ago, 
we start on one of the most memorable rides of 
our life. The country looked fresh and luxuriant 
from recent rains. The close-trimmed hedges, the 
sleek cattle, the snuor cottages, the strao^linGf y[\. 



102 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

lages with their historic inns, the castle from whose 
park Shakspeare stole the deer, the gate called 
" Shakspeare's stile," curious in the fact that it 
looks like ordinary bars of fence, but as you at- 
tempt to climb over, the whole thing gives way, 
and lets vou fall flat, ri^htinor itself as soon as it is 
unburdened of you ; the rabbits darting along the 
hedges, undisturbed, because it is unlawful, save 
for licensed hunters, to shoot, and then not on pri- 
vate property ; the perfect weather, the blue sky, 
the exhilarating breeze, the crlorious elms and oaks 
by the way, — make it a day that will live when most 
other days are dead. 

At two o'clock we came in siofht of Kenilworth 
Castle. Oh, this is the place to stir the blood. 
It is the king of ruins. Warwick is nothing, Mel- 
rose is nothing, compared with it. A thousand 
great facts look out through the broken windows. 
Earls and kings and queens sit along the shattered 
sides of the banqueting-halls. The stairs are worn 
deep with the feet that have clambered them for 
eiaht hundred years. As a loving daughter ar- 
ranges the dress of an old man, so everv season 
throws a thick mantle of ivy over the mouldering 
wall. The roof that caught and echoed back the 
merriment of dead ages has perished. Time has 
struck his chisel into every inch of the structure. 

By the payment of only threepence you find 



A BREATH OF ENGLISH A JR. 103 

access to places where only the titled were once 
permitted to walk. You go in, and are over- 
whelmed with the thoughts of past glory and 
present decay. These halls were promenaded by 
Richard Cceur de Lion ; in this chapel burned the 
tomb-lights over the grave of Geoffrey de Clinton; 
in these dungeons kings groaned ; in these door- 
ways duchesses fainted. Scene of gold, and silver, 
and scroll-work, and chiseled arch, and mosaic. 
Here were heard the carousals of the Round 
Table ; from those very stables the caparisoned 
horses came prancing out for the tournament; 
through that gateway, strong, weak, heroic, mean, 
splendid Queen Elizabeth advanced to the castle, 
while the waters of the lake gleamed under torch- 
lights, and the battlements were aflame with rock- 
ets ; and cornet, and hautboy, and trumpet poured 
their music on the air; and goddesses glided out 
from the groves to meet her; and from turret to 
foundation Kenilworth trembled under a cannon- 
ade, and for seventeen days, at a cost of five thou- 
sand dollars a day, the festival was kept. Four 
hundred servants standing in costly livery ; sham 
battles between knights on horseback ; jugglers 
tumbling on the grass ; thirteen bears baited for 
the amusement of the guests ; three hundred and 
twenty hogsheads of beer consumed, till all Eu- 
rope applauded, denounced and stood amazed. 
1 



.:_ AROUND TJ/E TEA-TAB LI 

Where is the glory now? What has become 
of the velvet? Who wears the jewels? Would 

Amur R: bsart have so longed :o =:et into the castle 
had she known its coming ruin? Where are those 

whc were waited en. ana those wno waited? What 
has become of Elizabeth the visitor, and Robert 

Dudley the visited? Cromwell's men fashed urcn 
the scene : they drained the lakes ; they befouled 
the banquet- hall ; they dismantled the towers : they 
turned the castle into a tome on whose scarred 
ar.d riven sides ambition and cruelty an: hast may 
well read their doom. <% So let all thine enemies 
perish. O Lord : but let them that love him be as 
the sun when he goeth forth in his might." 




CHAPTER XV. 

THE MIDNIGHT LECTURE. 

AT eight o'clock precisely, on consecutive 
nights, we stepped on the rostrum at Chica- 
go, Zanesville, Indianapolis, Detroit, Jacksonville, 
Cleveland and Buffalo. But it seemed that Day- 
ton was to be a failure. We telegraphed from In- 
dianapolis, " Missed connection. Cannot possibly 
meet engagement at Dayton." Telegram came 
back saying, "Take a locomotive and come on!" 
We could not get a locomotive. Another tele- 
gram arrived : " Mr. Gale, the superintendent of 
railroad, will send you in an extra train. Go im- 
mediately to the depot !" We gathered up our 
traps from the hotel floor and sofa, and hurled 
them at the satchel. They would not go in. W T e 
put a collar in our hat, and the shaving apparatus 
in our coat-pocket ; got on the satchel with both 
feet, and declared the thing should go shut if it 
split everything between Indianapolis and Dayton. 
Arriving at the depot, the train was ready. We 
had a locomotive and one car. There were six of 
us on the train — namely, the engineer and stoker 

105 



106 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

on the locomotive ; while following were the con- 
ductor, a brakeman at each end of the car, and the 
pastor of a heap of ashes on Schermerhorn street, 
Brooklyn. " When shall we get to Dayton ?" we 
asked. " Half-past nine o'clock I" responded the 
conductor. "Absurd!" we said; " no audience 
will wait till half-past nine at night for a lecturer." 
Away we flew. The car, having such a light 
load, frisked and kicked, and made merry of a 
journey that to us was becoming very grave. 
Going round a sharp curve at break-neck speed, 
we felt inclined to suggest to the conductor that it 
would make no especial difference if we did not 
get to Dayton till a quarter to ten. The night was 
cold, and the hard ground thundered and cracked. 
The bridges, instead of roaring, as is their wont, 
had no time to give any more than a grunt as we 
struck them and passed on. At times it was so 
rough we were in doubt as to whether we were on 
the track or taking a short cut across the field to 
get to our destination a little sooner. The flag- 
men would hastily open their windows and look at 
the screeching train. The whistle blew wildly, 
not so much to give the villages warning as to 
let them know that something terrible had gone 
through. Stopped to take in wood and water. A 
crusty old man crawled out of a depot, and said to 
the engineer, "Jim, what on earth is the matter?" 



THE MIDNIGHT LECTURE. \0J 

" Don't know," said Jim; "that fellow in the car 
yonder is bound to get to Dayton, and we are put- 
ting things through." Brakes lifted, bell rung, and 
off again. Amid the rush and pitch of the train 
there was no chance to prepare our toilet, and no 
looking-glass, and it was quite certain that we 
would have to step from the train immediately into 
the lecturing-hall. We were unfit to be seen. We 
were sure our hair was parted in five or six differ- 
ent places, and that the cinders had put our face 
in mourning, and that something must be done. 
What time we could spare from holding on to the 
bouncing seat we gave to our toilet, and the ar- 
rangements we made, though far from satisfactory, 
satisfied our conscience that we had done what we 
could. A button broke as we were fastening our 
collar — indeed, a button always does break when 
you are in a hurry and nobody to sew it on. 
" How long before we get there ?" we anxiously 
asked. " I have miscalculated," said the conduct- 
or ; " we cannot get there till five minutes of ten 
o'clock." " My dear man," I cried, "you might as 
well turn round and go back ; the audience will be 
gone long before ten o'clock." " No !" said the 
conductor ; " at the last depot I got a telegram say- 
ing they are waiting patiently, and telling us to hurry 
on." The locomotive seemed to feel it was on the 
home-stretch. At times, what with the whirling 

9* 



108 AROUND THE TEA- TABLE. 

smoke, and the showering sparks, and the din, and 
rush, and bang, it seemed as if we were on our 
last ride, and that the brakes would not fall till we 
stopped for ever. 

At five minutes of ten o'clock we rolled into the 
Dayton depot, and before the train came to a halt 
we were in a carriage with the lecturing committee, 
going at the horse's full run toward the opera- 
house. Without an instant in which to slacken 
our pulses, the chairman rushed in upon the stage, 
and introduced the lecturer of the evening. After 
in the quickest. way shedding overcoat and shawl, 
we confronted the audience, and with our head yet 
swimming from the motion of the rail-train, we ac- 
costed the people — many of whom had been wait- 
ing since seven o'clock — with the words, " Long- 
suffering but patient ladies and gentlemen, you 
are the best-natured audience I ever saw." When 
we concluded what we had to say, it was about 
midnight, and hence the title of this little sketch. 

W r e would have felt it more worthy of the rail- 
road chase if it had been a sermon rather than a 
lecture. Why do not the Young Men's Christian 
Associations of the country intersperse religious 
discourses with the secular, the secular demand- 
ing an admission fee, the religious without money 
or price ? If such associations would take as fine 
a hall, and pay as much for advertising, the audi- 



THE MIDNIGHT LECTURE. 109 

ence to hear the sermon would be as large as the 
audience to hear the lecture. What consecrated 
minister would not rather tell the story of Christ 
and heaven free of charge than to get five hundred 
dollars for a secular address? Wake up, Young 
Men's Christian Associations, to your glorious op- 
portunity. It would afford a pleasing change. 
Let Wendell Phillips give in the course his great 
lecture on " The Lost Arts ;" and A. A. Willitts 
speak on "Sunshine," himself the best illustration 
of his subject; and Mr. Milburn, by "What a 
Blind Man saw in England," almost prove that 
eyes are a superfluity; and W. H. H. Murray 
talk of the " Adirondacks," till you can hear the 
rifle crack and the fall of the antlers on the rock. 
But in the very midst of all this have a religious 
discourse that shall show that holiness is the lost 
art, and that Christ is the sunshine, and that the 
gospel helps a blind man to see, and that from 
Pisgah and Mount Zion there is a better prospect 
than from the top of fifty Adirondacks. 

As for ourselves, save in rare and peculiar cir- 
cumstances, good-bye to the lecturing platform, 
while we try for the rest of our life to imitate the 
Minister who said, "This one thing I do!" There 
are exhilarations about lecturing that one finds it 
hard to break from, and many a minister who 
thought himself reformed of lecturing has, over- 



110 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

tempted, gone up to the American Library or 
Boston Lyceum Bureau, and drank down raw a 
hundred lecturing engagements. Still, a man once 
in a while finds a new pair of spectacles to look 
through. 

Between Indianapolis and Dayton, on that wild, 
swift ride, we found a moral which we close with — 
for the printer-boy with inky fingers is waiting for 
this paragraph — Never take the last train when you 
can help it. Much of the trouble in life is caused 
by the fact that people, in their engagements, wait 
till the last minute. The seven-o'clock train will 
take them to the right place if everything goes 
straight, but in this world things are very apt to 
go crooked. So you had better take the train that 
starts an hour earlier. In everything we under- 
take let us leave a little margin. We tried, jok- 
ingly, to persuade Captain Berry, when off Cape 
Hatteras, to go down and get his breakfast, while 
we took his place and watched the course of the 
steamer. He intimated to us that we were run- 
ning too near the bar to allow a greenhorn to man- 
age matters just there. There is always danger 
in sailing near a coast, whether in ship or in plans 
and morals. Do not calculate too closely on pos- 
sibilities. Better have room and time to spare. 
Do not take the last train. Not heeding this 
counsel makes bad work for this world and the 



THE MIDNICHT LECTURE. 



I I I 



next. There are many lines of communication 
between earth and heaven. Men say they can 
start at any time. After a while, in great excite- 
ment, they rush into the depot of mercy, and find 
that the final opportunity has left, and, behold ! it 
is the last train I 




CHAPTER XVI. 

THE SEXTON. 

KING DAVID, it is evident, once thought 
something of becoming a church sexton, 
for he said, " I had rather be a doorkeeper" and 
so on. But he never carried out the plan, perhaps 
because he had not the qualification. It requires 
more talent in some respects to be sexton than to 
be king. A sexton, like a poet, is born. A church, 
in order to peace and success, needs the right kind 
of man at the prow, and the right kind at the 
stern — that is, a good minister and a good sexton. 
So far as we have observed, there are four kinds 
of janitors. 

TJie Fidgety Sexton. 

He is never still. His being in any one place 
proves to him that he ought to be in some other. 
In the most intense part of the service, every ear 
alert to the truth, the minister at the very climax 
of his subject, the fidgety official starts up the 
aisle. The whole congregation instantly turn 
from the consideration of judgment and eternity 
to see what the sexton wants. The minister looks, 

112 



THE SEX TO IV. I I 3 

the elders look, the people in the gallery get up to 
look. It is left in universal doubt as to why the 
sexton frisked about at just that moment. He 
must have seen a fly on the opposite side of the 
church wall that needed to be driven off before it 
spoiled the fresco, or he may have suspicion that a 
rat-terrier is in one of the pews by the pulpit, from 
the fact that he saw two or three children lau^h- 
ing. Now, there is nothing more perplexing than 
a dog-chase during religious service. At a prayer- 
meeting once in my house, a snarling poodle came 
in, looked around, and then went and sat under 
the chair of its owner. We had no objection to 
its being there (dogs should not be shut out from 
all advantages), but the intruder would not keep 
quiet. A brother of dolorous whine was engaged 
in prayer, when poodle evidently thought that the 
time for response had come, and gave a loud yawn 
that had no tendency to solemnize the occasion. 
I resolved to endure it no longer. I started to 
extirpate the nuisance. I made a fearful pass of 
my hand in the direction of the dog, but missed 
him. A lady arose to give me a better chance at 
the vile pup, but I discovered that he had changed 
position. I felt by that time obstinately determined 
to eject him. He had got under a rocking-chair, 
at a point beyond our reach, unless we got on our 
knees ; and it being a prayer-meeting, we felt no 



114 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

inappropriateness in taking that position. Of 
course the exercises had meanwhile been sus- 
pended, and the eyes of all were upon my under- 
taking. The elders wished me all success in this 
police duty, but the mischievous lads by the door 
were hoping for my failure. Knowing this, I re- 
solved that if the exercises were never resumed, I 
would consummate the work and eject the dis- 
turber. While in this mood I gave a lunge for 
the dog, not looking to my feet, and fell over a 
rocker ; but there were sympathetic hands to help 
me up, and I kept on until by the back of the neck 
I grasped the grizzly-headed pup, as he com- 
menced kicking, scratching, barking, yelping, howl- 
ing, and carried him to the door in triumph, and 
without any care as to where he landed hurled 
him out into the darkness. 

Give my love to the sexton, and tell him never 
to chase a dog in religious service. Better let it 
alone, though it should, like my friend's poll-par- 
rot, during prayer-time, break out with the song, 
" I would not live alway !" But the fidgety sexton 
is ever on the chase ; his boots are apt to be noisy 
and say as he goes up the aisle, " Creakety-crack ! 
Here I come. Creakety-crack !" Why should he 
come in to call the doctor out of his pew when 
the case is not urgent? Cannot the patient wait 
twenty minutes, or is this the cheap way the doc- 



THE SKXTOX. 115 

tor has of advertising? Dr. Camomile had but 
three cases in three months, and, strange coinci- 
dence, they all came to him at half-past eleven 
o'clock Sunday morning, while he was in church. 
If windows are to be lowered, or blinds closed, or 
register to be shut off, let it be before the sermon. 

The Lazy Sexton. 

He does not lead the stranger to the pew, but 
goes a little way on the aisle, and points, saying, 
" Out yonder !" You leave the photograph of 
your back in the dust of the seat you occupy ; the 
air is in an atmospheric hash of what was left over 
last Sunday. Lack of oxygen will dull the best 
sermon, and clip the wings of gladdest song, and 
stupefy an audience. People go out from the 
poisoned air of our churches to die of pneumonia. 
What a sin, when there is so much fresh air, to let 
people perish for lack of it ! The churches are 
the worst ventilated buildings on the continent. 
No amount of grace can make stale air sacred. 
11 The prince of the power of the air " wants noth- 
ing but poisoned air for the churches. After 
audiences have assembled, and their cheeks are 
flushed, and their respiration has become painful, 
it is too late to change it. Open a window or 
door now, and you ventilate only the top of that 

man's bald head, and the back of the neck of that 

10 



Il6 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

delicate woman, and you send off hundreds of 
people coughing and sneezing. One reason why 
the Sabbaths are so wide apart is that even- church- 
building may have six days of atmospheric purifi- 
cation. The best man's breath once ejected is not 
worth keeping. Our congregations are dying of 
asphyxia. In the name of all the best interests of 
the church, I indict one-half the sextons. 

TJie Good Sexton. 

He is the minister's blessing, the church's joy, a 
harbinger of the millennium. People come to 
church to have him help them up the aisle. He 
wears slippers. He stands or sits at the end of 
the church during an impressive discourse, and 
feels that, though he did not furnish the ideas, he 
at least furnished the wind necessary in preaching 
it. He has a quick nostril to detect unconsecrated 
odors, and puts the man who eats garlic on the 
back seat in the corner. He does not regulate 
the heat by a broken thermometer, minus the 
mercury. He has the window-blinds arranged just 
rieht — the light not too Marine so as to show the 
freckles, nor too dark so as to cast a gloom, but a 
subdued light that makes the plainest face attract- 
ive. He rings the bell merrily for Christmas fes- 
tival, and tolls it sadly for the departed. He has 
real pity for the bereaved in whose house he goes 



THE SEXTON. \\/ 

for the purpose of burying their dead — not giving 
by cold, professional manner the impression that 
his sympathy for the troubled is overpowered by 
the joy that he has in selling another coffin. He 
forgets not his own soul ; and though his place is 
to stand at the door of the ark, it is surely inside 
of it. After a while, a Sabbath comes when every- 
thing is wrong in church: the air is impure, the 
furnaces fail in their work, and the eyes of the 
people are blinded with an unpleasant glare. 
Everybody asks, "Where is our old sexton?" 
Alas ! he will never come again. He has gone 
to join Obed-edom and Berechiah, the doorkeepers 
of the ancient ark. He will never again take the 
dustin^-whisk from the closet under the church 
stairs, for it is now with him " Dust to dust." The 
bell he so often rang takes up its saddest tolling 
for him who used to pull it, and the minister goes 
into his disordered and unswept pulpit, and finds 
the Bible upside down as he takes it up to read 
his text in Psalms, 84th chapter and 10th verse : " I 
had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my 
God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness !" 




CHAPTER XVII. 

THE OLD CRADLE. 

THE historic and old-time cradle is dead, and 
buried in the rubbish of the garret. A baby 
of five months, filled with modern notions, would 
spurn to be rocked in the awkward and rustic 
thing. The baby spits the " Alexandra feeding- 
bottle " out of its mouth, and protests against the 
old-fashioned cradle, giving emphasis to its utter- 
ances by throwing down a rattle that cost seven 
dollars, and kicking off a shoe imported at fabu- 
lous expense, and upsetting the "baby-basket," 
with all its treasures of ivory hair-brushes and 
"Meen Fun." Not with voice, but by violence of 
gesture and kicks and squirms, it says: "What! 
You going to put me in that old cradle ? Where 
is the nurse? My patience! What does mother 
mean ? Get me a ' patented self-rocker !' " 

The parents yield. In comes the new-fangled 
crib. The machine is wound up, the baby put 
in, the crib set in motion, and mother goes off to 
make a first-rate speech at the "Woman's Rights 
Convention" ! 

118 



THE OLD CRADLE. 119 

Conundrum: Why is a maternal elocution- 
ist of this sort like a mother of old time, who 
trained four sons for the holy ministry, and through 
them was the means of reforming and saving a 
thousand souls, and through that thousand of sav- 
ing ten thousand more? You answer: "No re- 
semblance at all /" You are right. Guessed the 
conundrum the first time. Go up to the head of 
the class ! 

Now, the " patented self-rockers," no doubt, 
have their proper use ; but go up with me into the 
garret of your old homestead, and exhume the 
cradle that you, a good while ago, slept in. The 
rockers are somewhat rough, as though a farmer's 
plane had fashioned them, and the sides just high 
enough for a child to learn to walk by. What a 
homely thing, take it all in all ! You say : Stop 
your depreciation ! We were all rocked in that. 
For about fifteen years that cradle was going much 
of the time. When the older child was taken out, 
a smaller child was put in. The crackle of the 
rockers is pleasant yet in my ears. There I took 
my first lessons in music as mother sang to me. 
Have heard what you would call far better singing 
since then, but none that so thoroughly touched 
me. She never got five hundred dollars per night 
for singing three songs at the Academy, with two 
or three encores grudgefully thrown in ; but With- 



120 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

out pay she sometimes sang all night, and came 
out whenever encored, though she had only two 
little ears for an audience. It was a low, subdued 
tone that sings to me yet across thirty-five years. 

You see the edge of that rocker, worn quite 
deep ? That is where her foot was placed while 
she sat with her knitting or sewing, on summer 
afternoons, while the bees hummed at the door and 
the shout of the boy at the oxen was heard afield. 
From the way the rocker is worn, I think that 
sometimes the foot must have been very tired 
and the ankle very sore ; but I do not think she 
stopped for that. When such a cradle as that got 
a-going, it kept on for years. 

Scarlet-fever came in the door, and we all had 
it; and oh how the cradle did eo ! We con- 
tended as to who should lie in it, for sickness, vou 
know, makes babies of us all. But after a while 
we surrendered it to Charlie. He was too old to 
lie in it, but he seemed so verv, verv sick ; and 
with him in the cradle it was " Rock !" " Rock!" 
"Rock!" But one dav, just as lone ao-o as vou 
can remember, the cradle stopped. When a child 
is asleep, there is no need of rocking. Charlie was 
asleep. He was sound asleep. Nothing would 
wake him. He needed taking up. Mother was 
too weak to do it. The neighbors came in to do 
that, and put a flower, fresh out of the garden-dew, 



THE OLD CRADLE. 121 

between the two still hands. The fever had gone 
out of the cheek, and left it white, very white — the 
rose exchanged for the lily. There was one less 
to contend for the cradle. It soon started again, 
and with a voice not quite so firm as before, but 
more tender, the old song came back : " Bye ! bye ! 
bye !" which meant more to you than "// Trovatore" 
rendered by opera troupe in the presence of an 
American audience, all leaning forward and nod- 
ding, to show how well they understood Italian. 

There was a wooden canopy at the head of the 
old cradle that somehow got loose and was taken 
off. But your infantile mind was most impressed 
with the face which much of the time hovered over 
you. Other women sometimes looked in at the 
child, and said : "That child's hair will be red !" or, 
"What a peculiar chin!" or, "Do you think that 
child will live to grow up ?" and although you were 
not old enough to understand their talk, by in- 
stinct you knew it was something disagreeable, 
and began to cry till the dear, sweet, familiar face 
again hovered and the rainbow arched the sky. 
Oh, we never get away from the benediction of 
such a face ! It looks at us through storm and 
night. It smiles all to pieces the world's frown. 
After thirty-five years of rough tumbling on the 
world's couch, it puts us in the cradle again, and 
hushes us as with the very lullaby of heaven. 



122 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Let the old cradle rest in the garret. It has 
earned its quiet. The hands that shook up its pil- 
low have quit work. The foot that kept the 
rocker in motion is through with its journey. The 
face that hovered has been veiled from mortal 
sight. Cradle of blessed memories ! Cradle that 
soothed so many little griefs ! Cradle that kindled 
so many hopes ! Cradle that rested so many 
fatigues ! Sleep now thyself, after so many years 
of putting others to sleep ! 

One of the great wants of the age is the right 
kind of a cradle and the right kind of a foot to 
rock it. We are opposed to the usurpation of 
"patented self-rockers." When I hear a boy call- 
ing his grandfather old daddy, and see the young- 
ster whacking his mother across the face because 
she will not let him have ice-cream and lemonade 
in the same stomach, and at some refusal holding 
his breath till he gets black in the face, so that to 
save the child from fits the mother is compelled to 
give him another dumpling, and he afterward goes 
out into the world stubborn, willful, selfish and in- 
tractable, — I say that boy was brought up in a 
" patented self-rocker. " The old-time mother 
would have put him down in the old-fashioned 
cradle, and sung to him, 

" Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber, 
Holy angels guard thy bed /" 



THE OLD CRADLE. 1 23 

and if that did not take the spunk out of him 
would have laid him in an inverted position across 
her lap, with his face downward, and with a rous- 
ing spank made him more susceptible to the 
music. 

When a mother, who ought to be most inter- 
ested in training her children for usefulness and 
heaven, gives her chief time to fixing up her back 
hair, and is worried to death because the curls she 
bought are not of the same shade as the sparsely- 
settled locks of her own raising ; and culturing the 
dromedarian hump of dry-goods on her back till, 
as she comes into church, a good old elder bursts 
into laughter behind his pocket-handkerchief, mak- 
ing the merriment sound as much like a sneeze as 
possible ; her waking moments employed with dis- 
cussions about polonaise, and vert-de-gris velvets, 
and ecru percale, and fringed guipure, and poufs, 
and sashes, and rose-de-chene silks, and scalloped 
flounces ; her happiness in being admired at balls 
and parties and receptions, — you may know that 
she has thrown off the care of her children, that 
they are looking after themselves, that they are 
being brought up by machinery instead of loving 
hands — in a word, that there is in her home a 
" patented self -rocker /" 

So far as possible, let all women dress beauti- 
fully : so God dresses the meadows and the moun- 



124 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

tains. Let them wear pearls and diamonds if they 
can afford it: God has hung round the neck of his 
world strings of diamonds, and braided the black 
locks of the storm with bright ribbons of rainbow. 
Especially before and right after breakfast, ere 
they expect to be seen of the world, let them look 
neat and attractive for the family's sake. One of 
the most hideous sights is a slovenly woman at the 
breakfast-table. Let woman adorn herself. Let 
her speak on platforms so far as she may have time 
and abilitv to do so. But let not mothers imagine 
that there is anv new wav of successfully training 
children., or of escaping the old-time self-denial and 
continuous painstaking. 

Let this be the commencement of the law-suit: 

OLD CRADLE 
versus 

PATENTED SELF-ROCKER. 

Attorneys for plaintiff — all the cherished mem- 
ories of the past. 

Attorneys for the defendant — all the humbugs 
of the present. 

For jury — the eood sense of all Christendom. 

Crier, open the court and let the jury be em- 
paneled. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

A HORSE'S LETTER. 
TRANSLATED FOR THE TEA-TABLE. 

Brooklyn Livery Stables,-* 
January 20, 1 874. / 

MY Dear Gentlemen and Ladies : I am aware 
that this is the first time a horse has ever 
taken upon himself to address any member of the 
human family. True, a second cousin of our 
household once addressed Balaam, but his voice 
for public speaking was so poor that he got un- 
mercifully whacked, and never tried it again. We 
have endured in silence all the outrages of many 
thousands of years, but feel it now time to make 
remonstrance. 

Recent attentions have made us aware of our 
worth. During the epizootic epidemic we had at 
our stables innumerable calls from doctors and 
judges and clergymen. Everybody asked about 
our health. Groomsmen bathed our throats, and 
sat up with us nights, and furnished us pocket- 
handkerchiefs. For the first time in years we had 
quiet Sundays. We overheard a conversation that 

125 



126 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

made us think that the commerce and the fashion 
of the world waited the news from the stable. 
Telegraphs announced our condition across the 
land and under the sea, and we came to believe 
that this world was originally made for the horse, 
and man for his groom. 

But things are going back again to where they 
were. Yesterday I was driven fifteen miles, jerked 
in the mouth, struck on the back, watered when I 
was too warm ; and instead of the six quarts of 
oats that my driver ordered for me, I got two. 
Last week I was driven to a wedding, and I heard 
music and quick feet and laughter that made the 
chandeliers rattle, while I stood unblanketed in the 
cold. Sometimes the doctor hires me, and I stand 
at twenty doors waiting for invalids to rehearse all 
their pains. Then the minister hires me, and I 
have to stay till Mrs. Tittle-Tattle has time to tell 
the dominie all the disagreeable things of the 
parish. 

The other night, after our owner had gone home 
and the hostlers were asleep, we held an indigna- 
tion meeting in our livery-stable. "Old Sorrel" 
presided, and there was a long line of vice-pres- 
idents and secretaries, mottled bays and dappled 
grays and chestnuts, and Shetland and Arabian 
ponies. " Charley," one of the old inhabitants of 
the stable, began a speech, amid great stamping on 



A HORSE'S LETTER. \2J 

the part of the audience. But he soon broke down 
for lack of wind. For five years he had been 
suffering with the " heaves." Then " Pompey," a 
venerable nag, took his place ; and though he had 
nothing to say, he held out his spavined leg, which 
dramatic posture excited the utmost enthusiasm 
of the audience. " Fanny Shetland," the property 
of a lady, tried to damage the meeting by saying 
that horses had no wrongs. She said, " Just look 
at my embroidered blanket. I never go out when 
the weather is bad. Everybody who comes near 
pats me on the shoulder. What can be more 
beautiful than going out on a sunshiny afternoon 
to make an excursion through the Park, amid the 
clatter of the hoofs of the stallions ? I walk, or 
pace, or canter, or gallop, as I choose. Think of 
the beautiful life we live, with the prospect, after 
our easy work is done, of going up and joining 
Elijah's horses of fire !" 

Next, I took the floor, and said that I was born 
in a warm, snug Pennsylvania barn ; was, on my 
father's side, descended from Bucephalus ; on my 
mother's side, from a steed that Queen Elizabeth 
rode in a steeple-chase. My youth was passed in 
clover pastures and under trusses of sweet-smell- 
ing hay. I flung my heels in glee at the farmer 
when he came to catch me. But on a dark day I 

was over-driven, and my joints stiffened, and my 

n 



128 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

fortunes went down, and my whole family was sold. 
My brother, with head down and sprung in the 
knees, pulls the street-car. My sister makes her 
living on the tow-path, hearing the canal-boys 
swear. My aunt died of the epizootic. My 
uncle — blind, and afflicted with the bots, the ring- 
bone and the spring-halt — wanders about the com- 
mons, trying to persuade somebody to shoot him. 
And here I stand, old and sick, to cry out against 
the wrongs of horses — the saddles that gall, the 
spurs that prick, the snaffles that pinch, the loads 
that kill. 

At this a vicious-looking nag, with mane half 
pulled out, and a " watch-eye," and feet "interfer- 
ing," and a tail from which had been subtracted 
enough hair to make six " waterfalls," squealed out 
the suggestion that it was time for a rebellion, and 
she moved that we take the field, and that all those 
who could kick should kick, and that all those who 
could bite should bite, and that all those who could 
bolt should bolt, and that all those who could run 
away should run away, and that thus we fill the 
land with broken wagons and smashed heads, and 
teach our oppressors that the day of retribution 
has come, and that our down-trodden race will no 
more be trifled with. 

When this resolution was put to vote, not one 
said "Aye," but all cried "Nay, nay," and for the 



A HORSE'S LETTER. 1 29 

space of half an hour kept on neighing. Instead 
of this harsh measure, it was voted that, by the 
hand of Henry Bergh, president of the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, I should 
write this letter of remonstrance. , 

My dear gentlemen and ladies, remember that 
we, like yourselves, have moods, and cannot always 
be frisky and cheerful. You do not slap your 
grandmother in the face because, this morning, she 
does not feel as well as usual ; why, then, do you 
slash us ? Before you pound us, ask whether we 
have been up late the night before, or had our 
meals at irregular hours, or whether our spirits 
have been depressed by being kicked by a drunken 
hostler. We have only about ten or twelve years 
in which to enjoy ourselves, and then we go out 
to be shot into nothingness. Take care of us 
while you may. Job's horse was " clothed with 
thunder," but all we ask is a plain blanket. When 
we are sick, put us in a horsepital. Do not strike 
us when we stumble or scare. Suppose you were 
in the harness and / were in the wagon, I had the 
whip and you the traces, what an ardent advocate 
you would be for kindness to the irrational crea- 
tion ! Do not let the blacksmith drive the nail into 
the quick when he shoes me, or burn my fetlocks 
with a hot file. Do not mistake the " dead-eye " 
that nature put on my fore-leg for a wart to be ex- 



130 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

terminated. Do not cut off my tail short in fly- 
time. Keep the north wind out of our stables. 
Care for us at some other time than during the 
epizootics, so that we may see your kindness is not 
selfish. 

My dear friends, our interests are mutual. I am 
a silent partner in your business. Under my 
sound hoof is the diamond of national prosperity. 
Beyond my nostril the world's progress may not 
go. With thrift, and wealth, and comfort, I daily 
race neck and neck. Be kind to me if you want 
me to be useful to you. And near be the day 
when the red horse of war shall be hocked and im- 
potent, and the pale horse of death shall be hurled 
back on his haunches, but the white horse of peace, 
and joy, and triumph shall pass on, its rider with 
face like the sun, all nations following ! 

Your most obedient servant, 

Charley Bucephalus. 



- ^fy 



V 



CHAPTER XIX. 

KINGS OF THE KENNEL. 

I SAID, when I lost Carlo, that I would never 
own another dog. We all sat around, like big 
children, crying about it ; and what made the grief 
worse, we had no sympathizers. Our neighbors 
were glad of it, for he had not always done the 
fair thing with them. One of them had lost a 
chicken when it was stuffed and all ready for the 
pan, and suspicions were upon Carlo. 

I was the only counsel for the defendant; and 
while I had to acknowledge that the circumstantial 
evidence was against him, I proved his general 
character for integrity, and showed that the com- 
mon and criminal law were on our side, Coke and 
Blackstone in our favor, and a long list of authori- 
ties and decisions: II. Revised Statutes, New 
York, 132, § 27; also, Watch vs. Towser, Cromp- 
ton and Meeson, p. 375 ; also, State of New Jer- 
sey vs. Sicem Blanchard. 

When I made these citations, my neighbor and 
his wife, who were judges and jurors in the case, 
looked confounded; and so I followed up the ad- 

131 



132 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

vantage I had gained with the law maxim, Kon 
minus ex dolo quam ex culpa quisque hoc lege tene- 
tur, which I found afterward was the wrone Latin, 
but it had its desired effect, so that the jury did 
not agree, and Carlo escaped with his life ; and 
on the way home he went spinning round like a 
top, and punctuating his glee with a semicolon 
made by both paws on my new clothes. 

Yet, notwithstanding all his predicaments and 
frailties, at his decease we resolved, in our trouble, 
that we would never own another doo\ But this, 
like many another resolution of our life, has been 
broken ; and here is Nick, the Newfoundland, lv- 
ing sprawled on the mat. He has a jaw set with 
strength ; an eve mild, but indicative of the fact 
that he does not want too many familiarities from 
strangers ; a nostril large enough to snuff a wild 
duck across the meadows : knows how to shake 
hands, and can talk with head, and ear. and tail ; 
and, save an unreasonable antipathy to cats, is 
perfect, and always goes with me on my walk out 
of town. 

He knows more than a great many people. 
Never do we take a walk but the poodles, and the 
rat-terriers, and the orizzlv curs with strinow hair 
and damp nose, get after him. They tumble oft" 
the front door-step and out of the kennels, and 
assault him front and rear. I have several times 



KINGS OF THE KENNEL. I 33 

said to him (not loud enough for Presbytery to 
hear), "Nick, why do you stand all this? Go at 
them !" He never takes my advice. He lets them 
bark and snap, and passes on unprovokedly with- 
out sniff or growl. He seems to say, "They are 
not worth minding. Let them bark. It pleases 
them and don't hurt me. I started out for a six- 
mile tramp, and I cannot be diverted. Newfound- 
landers like me have a mission. My father pulled 
three drowning men to the beach, and my uncle 
on my mother's side saved a child from the snow. 
If you have anything brave, or good, or great for 
me to do, just clap your hand and point out the 
work, and I will do it, but I cannot waste my time 
on rat-terriers." 

If Nick had put that in doggerel, I think it would 
have read well. It was wise enough to become 
the dogma of a school. Men and women are 
more easily diverted from the straight course than 
is Nick. No useful people escape being barked 
at. Mythology represents Cerberus a monster 
dog at the mouth of Hell, but he has had a long 
line of puppies. They start out at editors, teach- 
ers, philanthropists and Christians. If these men 
go right on their way, they perform their mission 
and get their reward, but one-half of them stop 
and make attempt to silence the literary, political 
and ecclesiastical curs that snap at them. 



134 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE, 

Many an author has got a drop of printers' ink 
spattered in his eye, and collapsed. The critic 
who had lobsters for supper the night before, and 
whose wife in the morning had parted his hair on 
the wrong side, snarled at the new hook, and the 
time that the author might have spent in new 
work he squanders in gunning for critics. You 
might better have crone straight ahead, Nick ! 
You will come to be estimated for exactly what 
you are worth. If a fool, no amount of newspa- 
per or magazine puffery can set you up : and If 
you are useful, no amount of newspaper or maga- 
zine detraction can keep you down. For even* 
position there are twenty aspirants ; only one man 
can get it: forthwith the other nineteen are on the 
offensive. People are silly enough to think that 
they can build themselves up with the bricks they 
pull out of your wail. Pass on and leave them. 
'What a waste of powder for a hunter to go into 
the woods to shoot black flies, or for a man of 
great work to notice infinitesimal assault ! My 
Newfoundland would scorn to be seen making a 
drive at a black-and-tan terrier. 

But one day. on my walk with Xick. we had an 
awful time. We were coming in at great speed, 
much of the time on a brisk run. my mind full of 
white clover tops and the balm that exudes from 
the woods in full leafage, when, passing the com- 







millNimlllMii'iilllli 



KINGS OF THE KENNEL. 1 37 

mons, we saw a dog-fight in which there mingled 
a Newfoundland as large as Nick, a blood-hound, 
and a pointer. They had been interlocked for 
some time in terrific combat. They had gnashed 
upon and torn each other until there was getting 
to be a great scarcity of ears, and eyes, and tails. 

Nick's head was up, but I advised him that he 
had better keep out of that canine misunderstand- 
ing. But he gave one look, as much as to say, 
" Here at last is an occasion worthy of me," and 
at that dashed into the fray. There had been no 
order in the fight before, but as Nick entered they 
all pitched at him. They took him fore, and aft, 
and midships. It was a greater undertaking than 
he had anticipated. He shook, and bit, and hauled, 
and howled. He wanted to get out of the fight, 
but found that more difficult than to get in. 

Now, if there is anything I like, it is fair play. 
I said, " Count me in !" and with stick and other 
missiles I came in like Blucher at nightfall. Nick 
saw me and plucked up courage, and we gave it 
to them right and left, till our opponents went 
scampering down the hill, and I laid down the 
weapons of conflict and resumed my profession as 
a minister, and gave the mortified dog some good 
advice on keeping out of scrapes, which homily 
had its proper effect, for, with head down and pen- 
itent look, he jogged back with me to the city. 



I38 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Lesson for do~s and men : Keep out of fiehts. 
If you see a church contest, or a company of un- 
sanctified females overhauling each oncer's good 
name until there is nothing left of them but a 
broken hoop-skirt and one curl of back hair, you 
had better stand clear. Once go in. and your own 
character will be an invitation to their muzzles. 
Nick's long, clean ear was a temptation to all the 
teeth. You will have enough battles of vour own, 
without getting a loan of conflicts at twenty per 
cent, a month. 

Ever\- time since the unfortunate struggle I have 
described, when Nick and I take a country walk 
and pass a dog-fight, he comes close up by my 
side, and looks me in the eye with one long wipe 
of the tongue over his chops, as much as to say. 
"Easier to get into a fmht than to cfet out of it. 
Better jog along our own way :" and then I preach 
him a short sermon from Proverbs xxvi. 17 : "He 
that passeth by. and meddleth with strife belong- 
in:- not to him. is like one that taketh a dor bv the 
ears." 




CHAPTER XX. 

THE MASSACRE OF CHURCH MUSIC. 

THERE has been an effort made for the last 
twenty years to kill congregational singing. 
The attempt has been tolerably successful ; but it 
seems to me that some rules might be given by 
which the work could be done more quickly and 
completely. What is the use of having it linger- 
ing on in this uncertain way ? Why not put it out 
of its misery ? If you are going to kill a snake, 
kill it thoroughly, and do not let it keep on wag- 
ging its tail till sundown. Congregational singing 
is a nuisance, anyhow, to many of the people. It 
interferes with their comfort. It offends their 
taste. It disposes their noses to flexibility in the 
upward direction. It is too democratic in its tend- 
ency. Down with congregational singing, and let 
us have no more of it. 

The first rule for killing it is to have only such 
tunes as the people cannot sing \ 

In some churches it is the custom for choirs at 
each service to sing one tune which the people 
know. It is very generous of the choir to do that. 

139 



I-P AROVXD THE TEA-TABLE, 

The people ought to be very thankful for the dona- 
tion, They do not deserve it. They are all "mis- 
erable offenders" il heard them sav so), and, if 
permitted once in a service to sing, ought to think 
themselves highly favored. But I oppose this 
singing of even the one tune that the people un- 
derstand. It spoils them. It gets them hankering 
after more. Total abstinence is the only safety; 
for if you allow them to imbibe at all, they will 
after a while get in the habit of drinking too much 
of it, and the first thinsf vou know thev will be 
going around drunk on sacred psalmody. 

Besides that, if you let them sing one tune at a 
sendee, they will be putting their oar into the 
other tunes and bothering the choir. There is 
nothing more annovinof to the choir than, at some 
moment when they have drawn out a note to ex- 
quisite fineness, thin as a split hair, to have some 
blundering elder to come in with a " Praise ve the 
Lord !" Total abstinence, I sav ! Let all the 
churches take the pledge even against the milder 
musical beverages ; for they who tamper with 
champagne cider soon get to Hock and old Bur- 
pfundy. 

Xow. if all the tunes are new, there will be no 
temptation to the people. They will not keep 
humminor alono\ hoping thev will find some bars 
down where they can break into the clover pas- 



THE MASSACRE OE CHURCH MUSIC. 141 

ture. They will take the tune as an inextricable 
conundrum, and give it up. Besides that, Pisgah, 
Ortonville and Brattle Street are old fashioned. 
They did very well in their day. Our fathers were 
simple-minded people, and the tunes fitted them. 
But our fathers are gone, and they ought to have 
taken their baggage with them. It is a nuisance 
to have those old tunes floating around the church, 
and some time, just as we have got the music as 
fine as an opera, to have a revival of religion 
come, and some new-born soul break out in "Rock 
of Ages, Cleft for Me !" till the organist stamps 
the pedal with indignation, and the leader of the 
tune gets red in the face and swears. Certainly 
anything that makes a man swear is wrong — ergo, 
congregational singing is wrong. Quod erat dem- 
onstrandum ; which, being translated, means Plain 
as the nose on a man's face. 

What right have people to sing who know noth- 
ing about rhythmics, melodies, dynamics ? The 
old tunes ought to be ashamed of themselves when 
compared with our modern beauties. Let Dundee, 
and Portuguese Hymn, and Silver Street hide their 
heads beside what we heard not long ago in a 
church — just where I shall not tell. The minister 
read the hymn beautifully. The organ began, and 
the choir sang, as near as I could understand, as 

follows : 
12 



H 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Oo — azv — gee — bah 

Ah — nie — la — he 
O — pah — sah — dah 

Wo — haw — gee-e-e-e. 

My wife, seated beside me, did not like the 
music. But I said: "What beautiful sentiment! 
My dear, it is a pastoral. You might have known 
that from ' Wo-haw-gee F You have had your taste 
ruined by attending the Brooklyn Tabernacle." 
The choir repeated the last line of the hymn four 
times. Then the prima donna leaped on to the 
first line, and slipped, and fell on to the second, 
and that broke and let her through into the third. 
The other voices came in to pick her up, and got 
into a grand wrangle, and the bass and the so- 
prano had it for about ten seconds ; but the 
soprano beat (women always do), and the bass 
rolled down into the cellar, and the soprano went 
up into the garret, but the latter kept on squalling 
as though the bass, in leaving her, had wickedly 
torn out all her back hair. I felt anxious about 
the soprano, and looked back to see if she had 
fainted ; but found her reclining in the arms of a 
young man who looked strong enough to take 
care of her. 

Now, I admit that we cannot all have such things 
in our churches. It costs like sixty. In the Church 



THE MASSACRE OE CHURCH MUSIC. 1 43 

of the Holy Bankak it costs one hundred dollars 
to have sung that communion piece: 

" Ye wretched, hungry, starving poor /" 

But let us come as near to it as we can. The 
tune " Pisgah " has been standing long enough on 
"Jordan's stormy banks." Let it pass over and 
get out of the wet weather. Good-bye, "Antioch," 
"Harwell" and " Boylston." Good-bye till we 
meet in glory. 

But if the prescription of new tunes does not 
end congregational singing, I have another sug- 
gestion. Get an irreligious choir, and put them 
in a high balcony back of the congregation. I 
know choirs who are made up chiefly of religious 
people, or those, at least, respectful for sacred 
things. That will never do, if you want to kill the 
music. The theatrical troupe are not busy else- 
where on Sabbath, and you can get them at half 
price to sing the praises of the Lord. Meet them 
in the green room at the close of the " Black 
Crook" and secure them. They will come to 
church with opera-glasses, which will bring the 
minister so near to them they can, from their high 
perch, look clear down his throat and see his ser- 
mon before it is delivered. They will make excel- 
lent poetry on Deacon Goodsoul as he carries 
around the missionary box. They will write dear 
little notes to Gonzaldo, asking him how his cold 



144 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

is and how he likes gum-drops. Without inter- 
fering with the worship below, they can discuss the 
comparative fashionableness of "The Basque" and 
" The Polonaise," the one lady vowing she thinks 
the first style is " horrid," and the other saying she 
would rather die than be seen in the latter ; all 
this while the chorister is gone out during sermon 
to refresh himself with a mint-julep, hastening 
back in time to sing the last hymn. How much 
like heaven it will be when, at the close of a sol- 
emn service, we are favored with snatches from 
Verdi's " Trovatore," Meyerbeer's " Huguenots " 
and Bellini's " Sonnambula," from such artists as 

Mademoiselle Squintelle, 
Prima Donna Soprano, from Grand Opera- House, Paris. 

SlGNOR BOMBASTANI, 

Basso Buffo, from Royal Italian Opera. 

Carl Schnetderine, 

First Baritone, of His Majesty's Theatre, Berlin. 

If after three months of taking these two pre- 
scriptions the congregational singing is not thor- 
oughly dead, send me a letter directed to my name, 
with the title of O. F. M. (Old Fogy in Music), 
and I will, on the receipt thereof, write another 
prescription, which I am sure will kill it dead as a 
door-nail, and that is the deadest thing in all 
history. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE GENERAL CONFERENCE. 

THE month of May was memorable in Brook- 
lyn. You would have thought that there had 
been a deluge of theology raining forty days and 
forty nights, with no rainbow promising that the 
thing would never happen again. It seemed as if 
all the ministers of the land had broken loose. 
You passed them on every street. They stood 
in knots on the corner. If you wanted to say any- 
thing against Methodism, you had to look both 
ways, and up and down, before you dared to say 
it. They preached for us, but we soon found that 
would not do ; for if the matter went on, our con- 
gregations would never consent to hear us again. 
It is very hard to go back from venison and part- 
ridge and canvas-back duck to plain fare. Almost 
all our citizens looked in upon the great religious 
convocation. Its appearance impressed us with 
three or four things. 

Church courts nearly always look cadaverous. 
The majority of theologians are colorless and 
seem fagged out. But we do not believe there 

12* 145 



I46 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

ever was an equal amount of avoirdupois weight 
in any other church court. Indeed, none of them 
were known, while they were in Brooklyn, to miss 
their meals. Preaching evidently agrees with all 
of them. I suppose that, as they change residence 
every three years, they do not stay long enough in 
a place to get into disquieting predicaments. And 
then there are climatic considerations that ac- 
count for this sanitary condition. The doctors say 
that change of air is good for health, and itinerancy 
necessitates it. As a denomination, they do not 
smoke. Smoking sends many ministers to heaven 
before their time is up. I should like to go up on 
a cloud, but not on one of that kind. The clergy- 
man looks pale, and his dear people think it is be- 
cause he is becoming ethereal and sanctified ; but 
I have been behind the scenes, and I now let the 
outsiders know that it is not religion that gives 
that pallor and unearthly appearance, but tobacco- 
smoke. 

We need more physical development among 
the clergy. Leviticus, twenty-second chapter and 
twenty-second verse : " Blind, or broken, or maim- 
ed, or having a wen, or scurvy, or scabbed, ye shall 
not offer these unto the Lord." The Bible clergy 
had muscle as well as grace. David was little, 
but too much for Goliath, and grand on a bear- 
hunt. People talk of Paul as though he were a 



THE GENERAL CONFERENCE. 1 47 

skeleton because he had a " thorn in the flesh," 
but he was no skeleton. He rode horseback, and 
graduated from the saddle into the ministry. He 
did not fall from his horse because he was not a 
good rider. From the joyful view he took of 
almost everything, I know nothing ailed his liver. 
From the courageous way he stood before Felix, I 
know nothing was the matter with his backbone. 
At sixty-eight years of age he made a journey of 
more than fifteen hundred miles, before "palace 
cars" were invented, and still had enough strength 
left to write in a dungeon the Second Epistle to 
Timothy. How much skeleton was there about 
that? The ministry of 1892 will be strong, robust, 
agile and stalwart. Before the lamb and the lion 
lie down together there will have to be some 
fighting done, and I want our side to win. These 
men whom I saw down at the Conference we will 
place in the front of the battle, not only because 
we want stout men there, but because it is safer 
and more prudent for us to stay a little way back. 
The Conference was not a coroner's inquest, 
but a jubilee. We never knew a company of men 
with whose constitution religion seemed to agree 
so well. In them the thunder of the world's trouble 
had not soured the milk of human kindness. I do 
not know whether they will all get to heaven, but 
they all looked as if they were on their way to 



I48 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

some very comfortable place. There ought to be 
room on every man's face to write : " Praise ye the 
Lord !" If there are not enough glad things ahead 
of us, we had better turn round and go the other 
way. If we think the grapes of Canaan sour r 
better go back and eat onions in Egypt. There 
may be tough battles yet before us, but, with 
Pharaoh's host gone under, I think Miriam can 
risk the clapping of one pair of cymbals. 

The Conference was not a company or a regi- 
ment, but an army. If there ever was so large a 
church court assembled in this country, I never 
knew of it. It came across us overwhelmingly, 
the good that all those consecrated hearts must be 
doing. We want numbers. It will not do to pride 
ourselves any longer on being " a little flock." Do 
not let us be afraid of crowds. Heaven, accord- 
ing to the theory of some, must be a vulgar place 
because there will be a vast multitude there. This 
harvest is so great that we want the round earth 
to gleam with the flash of sickles. When the time 
just now spoken of comes for the lion to lie down 
with the lamb, do not let there be ten lions to two 
lambs. From the fact that, according to David, 
the chariots of God are twenty thousand, I know 
the Lord likes plenty of artillery. From the fact 
that Elisha's servant saw the mountains full of 
horses of fire, I know that God wants plenty of 



THE GENERAL CONFERENCE. 1 49 

flaming war-chargers. I knew a minister who 
prided himself on the fewness of his congregation. 
He said they were the elect. I saw that they had 
been elected to be bored. He preached until 
about all had left the church save the sexton and 
my father. The sexton stayed because he was 
paid, and father endured it because he could sleep 
soundly whenever he willed, and besides that, since 
the minister had ruined the church in every other 
way, it was important that somebody be on hand 
to see that he did not steal the cushions and car- 
pets. The sexton would not have seen any such 
depredations, because he was out in front of the 
church whittling sticks during service. Do not 
let us boast of our smallness. Let our churches 
and Conferences and General Assemblies be 
crowded with earnest souls. 

But the Conference is gone. They stayed four 
or five weeks, attending closely to business, the 
most of them staying to the very last, illustrating 
what they do not believe in — namely, the perse- 
verance of the saints. They stayed long enough 
to throw away the few bricks that remained of the 
wall between denominations. They got us all so 
mixed up that we had to take down our Heidel- 
berg and Westminster Catechisms to find our real 
bearings. They left their blessing in our city, and 
took our blessing to their homes ; and if this ar- 



ISO 



AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 



tide shall meet their eye, let them know that these 
words are written with a prayer that the Lord 
God of Israel may bless them and their children 
for ever. 




CHAPTER XXII. 

THE BA TTLE OF PE IV AND PULPIT. 

TWO more sermons unloaded, and Monday 
morning I went sauntering down town, ready 
for almost anything. I met several of my clerical 
friends going to a ministers' meeting. I do not 
often go there, for I have found that some of the 
clerical meetings are gridirons where they roast 
clergymen who do not do things just as we do 
them. I like a Presbyterian gridiron no better 
than a Methodist one, and prefer to either of them 
an old-fashioned spit, such as I saw this summer 
in Oxford, England, where the rabbit is kept turn- 
ing round before a slow fire, in blessed state of 
itinerancy, the rabbit thinking he is merely taking 
a ride, while he is actually roasting. 

As on the Monday morning I spoke of I was 
passing down the street, I heard high words in a 
church. What could it be ? Was it the minister, 
and the sexton, and the trustees fighting? I went 
in to see, when, lo ! I found that the Pew and the 
Pulpit were bantering each other at a great rate, 
and seemed determined to tell each one the other's 

151 



I5 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

faults. I stood still as a mouse that I might hear 
all that was said, and my presence not be noticed. 
The Pew was speaking as I went in, and said to 
the Pulpit, in anything but a reverential tone : 
" Why don't you speak out on other days as well 
as you do to-day? The fact is, I never knew a 
Pulpit that could not be heard when it was thor- 
oughly mad. But when you give out the hymn 
on Sabbaths, I cannot tell whether it is the seven- 
tieth or the hundredth. When you read the chap- 
ter, you are half through with it before I know 
whether it is Exodus or Deuteronomy. Why do 
you begin your sermon in so low a key ? If the 
introduction is not worth hearing, it is not worth 
delivering. Are you explaining the text ? If so, 
the Lord's meaning is as important as anything 
you will have in your sermon. Throw back your 
shoulders, open your mouth ! Make your voice 
strike against the opposite wall! Pray not only 
for a clean heart, but for stout lungs. I have 
nearly worn out my ears trying to catch your ut- 
terances. When a captain on a battle-field gives 
an order, the company all hear ; and if you want 
to be an officer in the Lord's army, do not mumble 
your words. The elocution of Christ's Sermon is 
described when we are told he opened his mouth 
and taught them — that is, spoke distinctly, as those 
cannot who keep their lips half closed. Do you 



THE BATTLE OP PEW AND PULPIT 1 53 

think it a sign of modesty to speak so low ? I 
think the most presuming thing on earth for a 
Pulpit to do is to demand that an audience sit 
quiet when they cannot hear, simply looking. The 
handsomest minister I ever saw is not worth look- 
ing at for an hour and a half at a stretch. The 
truth is that I have often been so provoked with 
your inarticulate speech that I would have got up 
and left the church, had it not been for the fact 
that I am nailed fast, and my appearance on the 
outside on a Sabbath-day, walking up and down, 
would have brought around me a crowd of un- 
sanctified boys to gaze at me, a poor church-pew 
on its travels." 

The Pulpit responded in anything but a pious 
tone : " The reason you do not hear is that your 
mind on Sundays is full of everything but the 
gospel. You work so hard during the week that 
you rob the Lord of his twenty-four hours. The 
man who works on Sunday as well as the rest of 
the week is no worse than you who abstain on 
that day, because your excessive devotion to busi- 
ness during the week kills your Sunday ; and a 
dead Sunday is no Sunday at all. You throw 
yourself into church as much as to say, ' Here, 
Lord, I am too tired to work any more for myself; 
you can have the use of me while I am resting !' 
Besides that, O Pew ! you have a miserable habit. 

13 



154 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

Even when you can hear my voice on the Sabbath 
and are wide awake, you have a way of putting 
your head down or shutting your eyes, and looking 
as if your soul had vacated the premises for six 
weeks. You are one of those hearers who think 
it is pious to look dull ; and you think that the 
Pew on the other side the aisle is an old sinner 
because he hunches the Pew behind him, and 
smiles when the truth hits the mark. If you want 
me to speak out, it is your duty not only to be 
wide awake, but to look so. Give us the benefit 
of your two eyes. There is one of the elders 
whose eye I have never caught while speaking, 
save once, and that was when I was preaching 
from Psalm cxviii. 12, ' They compassed me about 
like bees,' and by a strange coincidence a bumble- 
bee got into church, and I had my attention divided 
between my text and the annoying insect, which 
flew about like an illustration I could not catch. 
A dull Pew is often responsible for a dull Pulpit. 
Do not put your head down on the back of the 
seat in front, pretending you are very much af- 
fected with the sermon, for we all know you are 
napping." 

The Peiu : "If you want me to be alert, give me 
something fresh and startling. Your sermons all 
sound alike. It don't make any difference where 
you throw the net, you never fish up anything but 



THE BATTLE OF PEW AND PULPIT. 155 

moss-bunkers. You are always talking about stale 
things. Why don't you give us a touch of learned 
discussion, such as the people hear every Sunday 
in the church of Reverend Doctor Heavyasbricks, 
when, with one eye on heaven and the other on 
the old man in the gallery, he speaks of the Tri- 
dentine theory of original sin, and Patristic Sote- 
riology, Mediaeval Trinitarianism, and Antiochian 
Anthropology ? Why do you not give us some 
uncommon words, and instead of 'looking back 
upon your subject,' sometimes ' recapitulate,' and 
instead of talking about a man's ' peculiarities,' 
mention his ' idiot-sin-crasies,' and describe the 
hair as the capillary adornment ; and instead of 
speaking of a thing as tied together, say it was 
* inosculated.' " 

The Pulpit: "You keep me so poor I cannot 
buy the books necessary to keep me fresh. After 
the babies are clothed, and the table is provided 
for, and the wardrobe supplied, my purse is empty, 
and you know the best carpenter cannot make 
good shingles without tools. Better pay up your 
back salary instead of sitting there howling at me. 
You eased your conscience by subscribing for the 
support of the gospel, but the Lord makes no 
record of what a man subscribes : he waits to see 
whether he pays. The poor widow with the two 
mites is applauded in Scripture because she paid 




156 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

cash down. I have always noticed that you Pews 
make a big noise about Pulpit deficiencies just in 
proportion to the little you do. The fifty cents 
you pay is only premium on your policy of five 
dollars' worth of grumbling. O critical Pew ! you 
had better scour the brass number on your own 
door before you begin to polish the silver knob on 
mine/' 

The Pew : "I think it is time for you to go away. 
I am glad that Conference is coming. I shall see 
the bishop, and have you removed to some other 
part of the Lord's vineyard. You are too plain a 
Pulpit for such an elegant Pew. Just look at your 
big hands and feet. We want a spiritual guide 
whose fingers taper to a fine point, and one who 
could wear, if need be, a lady's shoe. Get out, 
with your great paws and clodhoppers ! We want 
in this church a Pulpit that will talk about heaven, 
and make no allusion to the other place. I have 
a highly educated nose, and can stand the smell 
of garlic and assafoetida better than brimstone. 
We want an oleaginous minister, commonly called 
oily. We want him distinguished for his unctu- 
osity. We want an ecclesiastical scent-bag, or, as 
you might call him, a heavenly nosegay, perfect in 
every respect, his ordinary sneeze as good as a 
doxology. If he cry during some emotional part 
of his discourse, let it not be an old-fashioned cry, 



THE BATTLE OF PEW AND PULPIT 1 57 

with big hands or coat-sleeve sopping up the 
tears, but let there be just two elegant tears, one 
from each eye, rolling down parallel into a pocket- 
handkerchief richly embroidered by the sewing 
society, and inscribed with the names of all the 
young ladies' Bible-class. If he. kneel before 
sermon, let it not be a coming down like a soul in 
want, but on one knee, so artistically done that the 
foot shall show the twelve-dollar patent leather 
shoe, while the aforesaid pocket-handkerchief is 
just peeping from the coat-pocket, to see if the 
ladies who made it are all there — the whole scene 
a religious tableau. We want a Pulpit that will 
not get us into a tearing-down revival, where the 
people go shouting and twisting about, regardless 
of carpets and fine effect, but a revival that shall 
be born in a band-box, and wrapped in ruffles, and 
lie on a church-rug, so still that nobody will know 
it is there. If we could have such a Pulpit as that, 
all my fellow-Pews would join me, and we would 
give it a handsome support ; yes, we would pay 
him ; if we got just what we want, we could afford 
to give, in case he were thoroughly eloquent, 
Demosthenic and bewitching — I am quite certain 
we could, although I should not want myself to be 
held responsible ; yes, he should have eight hun- 
dred dollars a year, and that is seven hundred and 
sixty dollars more than Milton got for his Paradise 

13* 



158 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Lost, about which one of his learned contempo- 
raries wrote : ' The old blind schoolmaster, John 
Milton, hath published a tedious poem on the fall 
of man : if its length be not considered a merit, it 
has no other.' Nothing spoils ministers like too 
big a salary. Jeshurun waxed fat and kicked : if it 
had not been for the wax and the fat, he would not 
have kicked. Sirloin-steaks and mince-pies are 
too rich for ministers. Put these men down on 
catfish and flounders, as were the fishermen 
apostles. Too much oats makes horses frisky, and 
a minister high-fed is sure to get his foot over the 
shaft. If we want to keep our pulpits spiritual, 
we must keep them poor. Blessed are the poor !" 
"Stop! stop!" cried the Pulpit; and it seemed 
to rise higher than before, and to tremble from 
head to foot with excitement, and the banisters to 
twist as if to fly in indignation at the Pew. and the 
plush on the book-board to look red as fire ; and 
seeing there was going to be a collision between 
Pulpit and Pew, I ran up the aisle and got between 
them (they were wide enough apart to allow me 
to get in), and I cried, " Silence ! This is great talk 
for a church. Pulpits ought not to scold, and Pews 
ought not to grumble. As far as I can see, you 
are both to blame. Better shake hands and pray 
for a better spirit. It wants more than a bishop 
to settle this difficulty. The Lord Almighty alone 



THE BATTLE OE PEW AND PULPIT 1 59 

can make Pulpit and Pew what they ought to be. 
You both need to be baptized over again !" Then, 
taking up a silver bowl that stood on the com- 
munion-table, half full of the water yesterday used 
at a babe's christening, I stood between the bel- 
ligerents, and sprinkled Pew and Pulpit with a 
Christian baptism, in the name of the Father, and 
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. And when I got 
through, I could not tell whether Pew or Pulpit said 
Amen the louder. 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

BRIG HAM AND WIVES MULTITUDINOUS. 

BRIGHAM was away. We were told he always 
is away when trouble is expected, and collision 
between the United States troops and the Mormons 
was likely to occur on the Fourth of July. But 
still Brigham had left his institution behind, and all 
his wives and children ; for no trunk that was ever 
manufactured would be large enough to contain 
the wearing apparel of seventeen wives and forty 
children. So very inconvenient would it have 
been to take them. 

The temple of granite is slowly rising. It will 
cost three millions of dollars, and be more glorious 
than Solomon's — so they tell us. One of the 
elders informed us that the architecture was an 
especial revelation to Brigham, and that, after 
many thousand dollars had been expended on the 
structure, the president appeared on the ground 
one morning and told the masons that the founda- 
tions must all come up. The workmen protested ; 
but Brigham's revelation must have its way. The 
foundations were lifted, and, lo ! under them was 

160 



BRIG HAM AND WIVES MULTITUDINOUS. l6l 

found a wooden roller, which after a while would 
have decayed and let down the whole structure. 
" Now," says the elder, " you must see that it was 
a divine revelation to Brigham, for no human 
judgment could have guessed the presence of the 
roller !" 

I find no difficulty in explaining the philosophy 
of Mormonism. There is a large class of people 
all the world over who seem to delight in being 
deceived ; the Mormons have merely turned gulli- 
bility into a religion. 

At eveningtide, on the hill back of the city, we 
met an intelligent Englishman who had become a 
Mormon. We intimated to him that we thought 
that the Pacific Railroad and the large influx of 
Gentiles to the newly-discovered mines would do 
Mormonism no good; but that the locomotive 
would run over it, and the Gentile's spade under- 
mine it. " No, no !" he said. " This Pacific Rail- 
road is to be the highway on which all people will 
gather to our church. Mormonism was never so 
strong as to-day !" 

' Question. — "What apology have you to make 
for polygamy ?" 

Answer. — "The Gentiles are a corrupt genera- 
tion, and that race will die out. Our object is to 
fill the land with a rapidly-increasing generation 
of Mormons, who will be a superior race, physi- 



1 62 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

caily as well as spiritually. I would have no hope 
for the triumph of our Church except through 
polygamy." 

Turning to his boy, that stood by him, he put 
his hand under the youngster's chin, and said to 
us : " Look there ! See what an eve that bov has, 
and what a face ! You see no such beautv as that 
outside of Mormonism !" The fact was that the 
child looked like a half-breed Indian, and gave no 
promise of ever being bright enough to learn his 
letters. We saw two boys of about the same size 
and promise at the Holy Communion, of which 
they had just partaken in the Mormon tabernacle, 
making spit-balls of the consecrated bread and 
throwing them at each other. 

Nothing impressed us more in Salt Lake City 
than the homeliness of the women. It may be 
un^allant to mention it ; but, as even' one that 
goes there thinks it, here goes the statement of 
the fact. Xow. homeliness of feature is not always 
a disadvantage. There is a handsome ugliness 
and a pious homeliness ; but with these Mormon 
women it is a vicious and outrageous uncomeli- 
ness, indicative of moral disfigurement. The tab- 
ernacle was alive with them. They made us shud- 
der. It is "assault and battery" to have them 
look at you. What Briorham or any other man 
would want of seventeen such looking creatures I 



BRIGHAM AND WIVES MULTITUDINOUS. 1 63 

cannot imagine. One of them, I should think, 
would be a great horror. Such dislocation of 
noses, and misplacement of mouths, and ruin of 
eyebrows, are not gathered together in any other 
place on this planet. There must be a good many 
witches among them. We would not have been 
much surprised to see them riding home on a 
broomstick. The only excuse we can see for 
polygamy is that it would take at least fifty such 
women to make one wife. 

We saw none of the halo around Salt Lake 
City that many writers have described. Admitting, 
as we do, the genius of Brigham Young for organ- 
ization ; and the fact that no place has seen such 
wonders of irrigation, which have turned a desert 
of wild sage into bloom ; and that a fabulous 
sum of money has been expended in aqueducts 
for bringing the snow-water from the mountain 
and pouring it through the gardens and along 
every street of the city ; and that many thousand 
people of the territory are completely under the 
supremacy of one man, so that if he winks they 
wink, and if he frowns they frown, — yet there is a 
dark shadow of crime that hovers over all, and the 
day of doom is swiftly coming. 

The rebellion in Mormondom began on the 
morning when, in opposition to the sign which 
Mormons put over the door of their stores and 



164 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

shops, inscribed with " Holiness to the Lord." a 
Gentile bv the name of Trumbo swuno- out his 
sign with the inscription: 

TRUMBO' S CREED: 

I AM THE LORD THY GoD. 

THY REDEEMER. 
THE HOLY ONE OF ISRAEL. 
LORD OF LORDS AND KING OF KINGS. 

A Mr. Godby. an influential Mormon and wealthy 
citizen of Sale Lake City, offended at the demand 
of Brigham for one-tenth of all the products of 
the soil., and indignant at the opposition of Brig- 
ham to the mining interests, swung off from the 
regular establishment, and. with his followers, has 
built a church of " Comeouters." Some of the 
Mormons begin to talk about where Brigham gets 
so much money from, and feel the weight of the 
taxes, and have strong suspicions that he has the 
resources of the settlement deposited in the Bank 
of England in his own name, ready for any per- 
sonal emergency. 

The machinery of Mormonism bee-ins to creak 
in every joint. There are not enough tons of salt 
washed up on the shore of its lake to save the 
institution. If forty millions of dollars more than 
now were spent in aqueducts, there would not 
be enough water to cleanse the pollution. All 
that the Government of the United States ex- 



BRIGHAM AND WIVES MULTITUDINOUS. 1 65 

pends in shot and shell by way of exterminating 

this most gigantic libertinism of the world is 

wasted. It is rotten, and will soon drop from the 

bough without any violent shaking. For the sake 

of all that is pure and good, God speed the day ! 

The analogy between Salt Lake City and Sodom 

is perfect. Both situate on a plain, surrounded by 

mountains, wild, grand, volcanic. Both near a 

lake so bitter that no living thing can dwell there. 

The crime of one was the crime of the other. 

The doom of the ancient city in the smoke of the 

Sulphur Springs seems to hover over the modern. 

And if we had not been too weary to accept the 

invitation to preach, we would have taken for our 

text the words of the angel to Lot : " Escape for 

thy life ; look not behind thee, neither stay thou 

in all the plain : escape to the mountain lest thou 

be consumed!" 
14 




CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE DEVIL'S GRIST- MILL. 

THE above name has been given to one of the 
geysers of California, that group of boiling 
springs, now famous. Indeed, the whole region 
has been baptized with Satanic nomenclature. 

The guide showed us what he called the 
"Devil's Mush-pot," the "Devil's Pulpit," the 
" Devil's Machine Shop," and, hearing a shrill 
whistle in the distance, we were informed it was 
the " Devil's Tea-kettle." Seeing some black 
water rushing from a fountain, from which the 
people of the neighborhood and tourists dip up 
genuine ink, we were told it was the " Devil's Ink- 
stand." Indeed, you are prepared for this on the 
Pacific Railroad, as your guide-book points you .to 
the " Devil's Gate," and the " Devil's Slide," and 
the " Devil's Peak." 

We protest against this surrender of all the 
geysers to the arch demon. All the writers talk 
of the place as infernal. We do not believe this 
place so near to hell as to heaven. We doubt 
if Satan ever comes here. He knows enough of 

100 



THE DEVIL'S GRIST-MILL. 1 6/ 

hot climates, by experience, to fly from the hiss of 
these subterraneous furnaces. Standing amid the 
roaring, thundering, stupendous wonder of two 
hundred spouting water springs, we felt like cry- 
ing out, " Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord 
God almighty!" 

Let all the chemists and geologists of the world 
come and see the footstep of God in crystals of 
alum and sulphur and salt. Here is the chemist's 
shop of the continent. Enough black indelible ink 
rushes out of this well, with terrific plash, to sup- 
ply all the scribes of the world. There are infin- 
ite fortunes for those who will delve for the borax, 
nitric and sulphuric acid, soda, magnesia and 
other valuables. Enough sulphur here to purify 
the blood of the race, or in gunpowder to kill it ; 
enough salt to savor all the vegetables of the 
world. Its acid water, which waits only for a little 
sugar to make it delicious lemonade, may yet be 
found in all the drug stores of the country. The 
water in one place roars like a steamboat discharg- 
ing its steam. Your boots curl with the heat as 
you stand on the hot rocks, looking. Almost any- 
where a thrust of your cane will evoke a gush of 
steam. Our thermometer, plunged into one 
spring, answered one hundred and seventy-five 
degrees of heat. Thrust in the "Witch's Cal- 
dron," it asserted two hundred and fifteen degrees. 



1 68 AROCXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

u The Inkstand " declared itself two hundred de- 
grees. An artificial whistle placed at the mouth 

of one of these geysers may be heard miles awav. 
You get a hot bath without paying for it. The 
guide warns you off the crust in certain places, 
lest you at the same moment be drowned and 
boiled. Here an egg cooks hard in three minutes. 

The whole scene is unique and incomparable. 
The Yosemite makes us think of the Alps : San 
Francisco reminds us of Chicago ; Foss. the stage- 
driver, hurling his passengers down the mountain 
at breakneck speed, suggests the driver of an Alp- 
ine diligence : Hutching" mountain horse, that 
stumbled and fell flat upon us. suggested our mule- 
back experiences in Tete Xoir Pass of Switzerland : 
but the Geysers remind us of nothing that we ever 
saw. or ever expect to see. They have a voice, 
a bubble, a smoke, a death-rattle, peculiar to them- 
selves. Xo photographist can picture them, no 
words describe them, no fancy sketch them. 

You may visit them by either of two routes ; 
but do not take the advice of Foss. the celebrated 
stage-driver. You ought to go bv one route, and 
return the other: yet Foss has made thousands of 
travelers believe that the only safe and interest- 
ing way to return is the way they go — namely, bv 
his route. They who take his counsel miss some 
of the grandest scenery on the continent. Any 



THE DEVIL'S GRIST-MILL. 1 69 

stage-driver who by his misrepresentations would 
shut a tourist out of the entrancing beauties of 
the " Russian Valley " ought to be thrashed with 
his own raw-hide. We heard Foss bamboozling a 
group of travelers with the idea that on the other 
route the roads were dangerous, the horses poor, 
the accommodations wretched and the scenery 
worthless. We came up in time to combat the 
statement with our own happy experiences of the 
Russian Valley, and to save his passengers from 
the oft- repeated imposition. 

And thus I have suggested the chief annoyance 
of California travel. The rivalries of travel are 
so great that it is almost impossible to get accurate 
information. The stage-drivers, guides and hotel 
proprietors, for the most part, are financially inter- 
ested in different routes. Going to Yosemite Val- 
ley by the " Calaveras route," from the office in 
San Francisco where you buy your ticket to the 
end of your journey, everybody assures you that 
J. M. Hu tchings, one of the hotel-keepers of Yo- 
semite, is a scholar, a poet, a gentleman and a 
Christian, and that to him all the world is in- 
debted for the opening of the valley. But if you 
go in by the " Mariposa route," then from the office 
where you get your ticket, along by all the way- 
stations and through the mountain passes, you are 
assured that Mr. Liedig, the hotel -keeper of Yo- 

14* 



I/O AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

Semite, is the poet and Christian, and that 1. M. 
Hutchinsfs aforesaid is a nobody, a blower, a dead 
beat, the chief impediment to the interests of Yo- 
semite — or, to use a generic term, a scalawag. 

The fact is that no one can afford in California 
to take the same route twice, for each one has a 
glory of its own. If a traveler have but one day 
for the Louvre Gallery, he cannot afford to spend 
it all in one corridor ; and as California is one 
great picture gallery, filled with the masterpieces 
of Him who paints with sunshine and dew and 
fire, and sculptures with chisel of hurricane and 
thunderbolt, we cannot afford to pass more than 
once before any canvas or marble. 

But whatever route you choose for the " Hot 
Springs," and whatever pack of stage-driver yarns 
you accept, know this — that in all this matchless 
California, with climate of perpetual summer, the 
sky cloudless and the wind blowing six months 
from the genial west ; the open field a safe thresh- 
ing-floor for the grandest wheat harvests of the 
world; nectarines and pomegranates and pears in 
abundance that perish for lack of enough hands 
to pick: by a product in one year of six million 
five hundred thousand gallons of wine proving 
itself the vineyard of this hemisphere ; African 
callas, and wild verbenas, and groves of oleander 
and nutmee ; the hills red with five thousand cattle 



THE DEVIL'S GRIST-MILL. 171 

in a herd, and white with a hundred and fifty thou- 
sand sheep in a flock ; the neighboring islands 
covered with wild birds' eggs, that enrich the mar- 
kets, or sounding with the constant "Yoi-Hoi," 
"Yoi-Hoi," of the sea-lions that tumble over 
them ; a State that might be called the " Central 
Park" of the world; the gulches of gold pouring 
more than fifty million of dollars a year into the 
national lap ; lofty lakes, like Tahoe, set crystalline 
in the crown of the mountain ; waterfalls so weird 
that you do not wonder that the Indians think that 
whosoever points his finger at them must die, and 
in one place the water plunging from a height more 
than sixteen times greater than Niagara, — even in 
such a country of marvels as this, there is nothing 
that makes you ask more questions, or bow in 
profounder awe, or come away with more interest- 
ing reminiscences than the world- renowned Cali- 
fornia geysers. 

There is a bang at your bed-room door at five 
o'clock in the morning, rousing you to go up and 
explore them ; and after spending an hour or two 
in wandering among them, you come back to the 
breakfast prepared by the model landlord of Cali- 
fornia, jolly, obliging, intelligent, reasonable. As 
you mount the stage for departure you give him a 
warm shake of the hand, and suggest that it would 
be a grand thing if some one with a vein of poetry 



172 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

in his mind and the faith of God in his heart would 
come round some day, and passing among the 
geysers, with a sprinkle of hot steam would bap- 
tize them with a Christian name. 

Let us ascribe to Satan nothing that is grand or 
creative or wise. He could not make one of 
these grains of alum. He could not blow up one 
of these bubbles on the spring. He does some 
things that seem smart ; but taking him all in all, 
he is the biggest fool in the universe. 

If the Devil wants to boil his "Tea-kettle," or 
stir his " Mush-pot," or whirl his " Grist-mill," let 
him do it in his own territory. Meanwhile, let the 
water and the fire and the vapor, at the lift of 
David's orchestral baton, praise the Lord ! 




CHAPTER XXV. 

THE CONDUCTOR'S DREAM. 

HE had been on the train all day, had met all 
kinds of people, received all sorts of treat- 
ment, punctured all kinds of tickets, shouted "All 
out !" and " All aboard !" till throat, and head, and 
hand, and foot were weary. It would be a long 
while before we would get to another depot, and 
so he sagged down in the corner of the car to 
sleep. He was in the most uncomfortable posi- 
tion possible. The wind blew in his neck, his arm 
was hung over the back of the seat, he had one 
foot under him, and his knee pressing hard against 
a brass hinge. In that twisted and convoluted 
position he fell asleep, and soon began to dream. 

It seemed to him, in his sleep, that the car was 
full of disagreeables. Here was a man who per- 
sisted in having a window up, while the rain and 
sleet drove in. There was a man who occupied 
the whole seat, and let the ladies stand. Here sat 
a man smoking three poor cigars at once, and ex- 
pectorating into the beaver hat of the gentleman 
in front. Yonder was a burglar on his way to 

173 



174 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

jail, and opposite a murderer going to the gal- 
lows. He thought that pickpockets took hi? watch 
and ruffians refused to pay their fare. A woman trav- 
eling alone shot at him a volley of questions : " Say. 
conductor, how lon^ before we will eet to the 
Junction?'' "Are you sure we have not passed 
it?" " Do you always stop there ?" " What time 
is it?" Madam, do keep quiet! "None of your 
impudence!" "How far from here to the Junc- 
tion ?" " Do vou think that other train will wait?" 
" Do vou think we will o-et there in time?" " Sav, 
conductor, how manv miles vet?" "Are vou 
looking out?" "Now. you won't let me go past, 
will you?" "Here! conductor, here! Help me 
out with my carpet-bag. and bandbox, and shawl, 
and umbrella, and this bundle of sausage and head- 
cheese." What was worse, the train got going 
one hundred and fifty miles an hour, and pulling 
the connecting-rope, it broke, and the cars got off 
the track, and leaped on again, and the stove 
changed places with the wood-box. and things 
seemed going to terrible split and unmitigated 
smash. The cities flew past. The brakes were 
powerless. The whistle grew into a fiend's shriek. 
Then the train began to slow up. and sheeted 
ghosts swun=r lanterns alon^ the track, and the 
cars rolled into a white depot, which turned out to 
be a great marble tomb : and looking back to see 



THE CONDUCTOR'S DREAM. 1 77 

his passengers, they were all stark dead, frozen in 
upright horror to the car-backs. 

Hearing by the man's snore, and seeing by his 
painful look, he was having an awful dream, we 
tapped him on the shoulder and said, " Conductor! 
Turn over that seat, and take my shawl, and stretch 
yourself out, and have a comfortable nap." "Thank 
you, sir," he said, and immediately sprawled him- 
self out in the easiest way possible. He began 
his slumbers just as an express train glides grace- 
fully out of Pittsburg depot; then went at it 
more earnestly, lifted all the brakes, put on all the 
steam, and in five minutes was under splendid 
headway. He began a second dream, but it was 
the opposite of the first. He thought that he had 
just stepped on the platform of his car, and a lady 
handed him a bouquet fresh from the hot-house. 
A long line of railroad presidents and superin- 
tendents had come to the depot to see him off, and 
tipped their hats as he glided out into the open 
air. The car was an improvement on Pullman's 
best. Three golden goblets stood at the end, and 
every time he turned the spigot of the water-cask, 
it foamed soda-water — vanilla if you turned it one 
way, strawberry if you turned it the other. The 
spittoon was solid silver, and had never been used 
but once, when a child threw into it an orange- 
peeling. The car was filled with lords and duch- 



i;S AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

esses, who rose and bowed as he passed through 
to collect the rare. T::ey ad insisted en paying 
twice as much as was demanded, reding him ro 
give naif to the company and keen the rest tor 
himself. Stopped a few minutes at Jolly Town. 
Gleeville and Velvet Junction, making connection 
with the Grand Trunk and Pan-Handle route for 
Paradise. But when the train halted there was no 
jolt, and when it started there was no jerk. The 
track was alwavs clear, no freight-train in the wav. 
no snow-bank to be shoveled — train always on 
time. Banks of roses on either side, bridges with 
piers of bronze, and rlagmen clad in cloth-of-gold. 
The train went three hundred miles the hour, but 
without any risk, for all the passengers were in- 
sured against accident in a comoanv that was will- 
ing to pay four times the price of what any neck 
was worth. The steam-whistle breathed as sweetly 
as anv church-choir chanting its ooe.ning piece. 
Nobody asked the conductor to see his time-table, 
for the only dread any passenger had was that of 
coming to the end of his journey. 

As night came on, the self-adjusting couches 
spread themselves on either side ; patent bootjacks 
roiled up and took your boots off; unseen lingers 
tucked the damask covers all about you. and the 
porter took your pocket-book to keep till morning, 
returning- it then with twice what vou had in it at 



THE CONDUCTOR'S DREAM. 1 79 

nightfall. After a while the train slackens to one 
hundred and seventy-five miles an hour, and the 
conductor, in his dream, announces that they are 
coming near the terminus. More brakes are 
dropped and they are running but ninety miles 
the hour ; and some one, looking out of the win- 
dow, says, " How slow we go !" " Yes," says the 
conductor, " we are holding up." Now they have 
almost stopped, going at only seventy miles the 
hour. The long line of depot-lamps are flashing 
along the track. On the platform of the station 
are the lovers who are waiting for their betrothed, 
and parents who have come down to greet their 
children, returned with a fortune, and wives who 
have not been able to eat or drink since their 
spouses went away three weeks before. As the 
cushioned train flashes into the depot and stops, 
wedding-bells peal, and the gong of many ban- 
quets sounds, and white arms are flung about 
necks, reckless of mistake, and innumerable per- 
cussions of affection echo through the depot, so 
crisp and loud that they wake the conductor, who 
thought that the boisterous smack was on his own 
cheek, but finds that he is nothing but a bachelor 
railroad-man, with a lantern, at midnight getting 
out into a snow-bank. 

Application : Get an easy position when you 
sleep, if you have any choice between angels and 



15 



t8o around the tea-table, 

gorgons. At midnight, seizing a chair, I ran into 
the next room, resolving to kill, at the first stroke, 
the ruffian who was murdering a member of mv 
household. But there was no ruffian. The sweet 
girl had, during the day, been reading of St. Bar- 
tholomew's massacre, and was now lying on her 
back, dreaming it all over again. When dreams 
find any one lying flat on the back, they cry out, 
" Here is a flat surface on which to skate and play 
ball," and from scalp to toe they sport themselves. 
The hardest nag in all the world to ride is the 
nightmare. Many think that sleep is lost time. 
But the style of your work will be mightily affected 
by the style of your slumber. Sound Asleep is 
sister of Wide Awake. Adam was the only man 
who ever lost a rib by napping too soundly ; but 
when he woke up, he found that, instead of the 
twelve ribs with which he started, he really had 
nigh two dozen. By this I prove that sleep is not 
subtraction, but addition. This very night may 
that angel put balm on both your eyelids five 
minutes after you touch the pillow ! 



^^i 




CHAPTER XXVI. 

PUSH &° PULL. 

WE have long been acquainted with a bus- 
iness firm whose praises have never been 
sung. I doubt whether their names are ever 
mentioned on Exchange. They seem to be doing 
more business and have more branch houses than 
the Stewarts or Lippincotts. You see their names 
almost everywhere on the door. It is the firm of 
Push & Pull. They generally have one of their 
partners' names on the outside of the door, and 
the other on the inside : " Push" on the outside 
and " Pull" on the inside. I have found their busi- 
ness-houses in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, 
Boston, London and Edinburgh. It is under my 
eye, whether I go to buy a hat, a shawl, or a paper 
of pins, or watch, or ream of foolscap. They are 
in all kinds of business ; and from the way they 
branch out, and put up new stores, and multiply 
their signboards on the outside and inside of 
doors, I conclude that the largest business firm on 
earth to-day is Push & Pull. 

When these gentlemen join the church, they 

1S1 



1 82 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

make things go along vigorously. The roof stops 
leaking ; a new carpet blooms on the church floor ; 
the fresco is retouched ; the high pulpit is lowered 
till it comes into the same climate with the pew ; 
strangers are courteously seated; the salary of 
the minister is paid before he gets hopelessly in 
debt to butcher and baker ; and all is right, finan- 
cially and spiritually, because Push & Pull have 
connected themselves with the enterprise. 

A new parsonage is to be built, but the move- 
ment does not get started. Eight or ten men of 
slow circulation of blood and stagnant liver put 
their hands on the undertaking, but it will not 
budge. The proposed improvement is about to 
fail, when Push comes up behind it and gives it a 
shove, and Pull goes in front and lays into the 
traces ; and, lo ! the enterprise advances, the goal 
is reached ! And all the people who had talked 
about the improvement, but done nothing toward 
it, invite the strangers who come to town to go up 
and see "our" parsonage. 

Push & Pull are wide-awake men. They never 
stand round with their hands in their pockets, as 
though feeling for money that they cannot find. 
They have made up their minds that there is a work 
for them to do ; and without wasting any time in 
reverie, they go to work and do it. They start a 
"life-insurance company." Push is the president, 



PUSH & PULL. 183 

and Pull the secretary. Before you know it, all 
the people are running in to have their lungs 
sounded, and to tell how many times they have had 
the rheumatism ; how old they are ; whether they 
ever had fits ; and at what age their father and 
mother expired ; and putting all the family secrets 
on paper, and paying Push & Pull two hundred 
dollars to read it. 

When this firm starts a clothing-house, they 
make a great stir in the city. They advertise in 
such strong and emphatic way that the people are 
haunted with the matter, and dream about it, and 
go round the block to avoid that store door, lest 
they be persuaded in and induced to buy some- 
thing they cannot afford. But some time the man 
forgets himself, and finds he is in front of the new 
clothing-store, and, at the first glance of goods in 
the show-window, is tempted to enter. Push 
comes up behind him and Pull comes up before 
him, and the man is convinced of the shabbiness 
of his present appearance — that his hat will not 
do, that his coat and vest and all the rest of his 
clothes, clean down to his shoes, are unfit; and 
before one week is past, a boy runs up the steps 
of this customer with a pasteboard box marked, 
" From the clothing establishment of Push & Pull. 
C. O. D." 

These men can do anything they set their hands 



ii>* 



1 84 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

to — publish a newspaper, lay out a street, build a 
house, control a railroad, manage a church, revo- 
lutionize a city. In fact, any two industrious, 
honorable, enterprising men can accomplish 
wonders. One does the outdoor work of the 
store, and the other the indoor work. One leads, 
the other follows; but both working in one direc- 
tion, all obstacles are leveled before them. 

I wish that more of our young men could gradu- 
ate from the store of " Push & Pull." We have 
tens of thousands of young men doing nothing. 
There must be work somewhere if they will only 
do it. They stand round, with soap-locks and 
scented pocket-handkerchiefs, tipping their hats to 
the ladies ; while, instead of waiting for business 
to come to them, thev ourfit to go to work and 
make a business. Here is the ladder of life. The 
most of those who start at the top of the ladder 
spend their life in coming down, while those who 
start at the bottom may go up. Those who are 
born with a gold spoon in their mouth soon lose 
the spoon. The two school-bullies that used to 
flourish their silk pocket-handkerchiefs in my face, 
and with their ivory-handled, four-bladed knives 
punch holes through my kite — one of them is in 
the penitentiary, and the other ought to be. 

Young man, the road of life is up hill, and our 
load heavy. Better take off your kid gloves, and 



PUSH &* PULL. 185 

patent leathers, and white vest, and ask Push, with 
his stout shoulder, and Pull, with his strong grip, 
to help you. Energy, pluck, courage, obstinate 
determination are to be cultured. Eat strong meat, 
drop pastries, stop reading sickly novelettes, pray 
at both ends of the day and in the middle, look a 
man in the eye when you talk to him, and if you 
want to be a giant keep your head out of the lap 
of indulgences that would put a pair of shears 
through your locks. 

If you cannot get the right kind of business 
partner, marry a good, honest wife. Fine cheeks 
and handsome curls are very well, but let them be 
mere incidentals. Let our young men select prac- 
tical women : there are a few of them left. With 
such an one you can get on with almost all the heavy 
loads of life. You will be " Pull," and she " Push;" 
and if you do not get the house built and the for- 
tune established, send me word, and I will tear this 
article up in such small pieces that no one will 
ever be able to find it. 

Life is earnest work, and cannot be done with 
the tips of the fingers. We want more crowbars 
and fewer gold toothpicks. The obstacles before 
you cannot be looked out of countenance by a 
quizzing-glass. Let sloth and softliness go to the 
wall, but three cheers for " Push & Pull," and all 
their branch business houses ! 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

BOSTOXIAXS. 

TT X E ran up to the Boston anniversaries to 
\ V cast our vote with those good people who 
are in that city on the side of the right. We like 
to go to the modern Athens two or three times a 
year. Among other advantages, Boston always 
soothes our nerves. It has a quieting effect upon 
us. The people there are better satisfied than 
any people we know of. Judging from a few rest- 
less spirits who get on some of the erratic plat- 
forms of that city, and who fret and fume about 
things in general, the world has concluded that 
Boston is at unrest. But you may notice that the 
most of the restless people who go there are im- 
ported speakers, whom Boston hires to come once 
a year and do for her all the necessary fretting. 

The genuine Bostonian is satisfied. He rises 
moderatelv earlv. goes to business without anv 
especial haste, dresses comfortably, talks deliber- 
ately, lunches freely, and goes home to his family 
at plausible hours. He would like to have the 
world made better, but is not going to make him- 

1S6 



BOSTONIANS. 1 87 

self sick in trying to cure the moral ailments of 
others. 

The genuine Bostonian is, for the most part, 
pleased with himself, has confidence that the big 
elm will last another hundred years, keeps his 
patriotism fresh by an occasional walk near the 
meat-market under Faneuil Hall, and reads the 
Atlantic Monthly. We believe there is less fidget- 
ing in Boston than in any city of the country. We 
think that the average of human life must be 
longer there than in most cities. Dyspepsia is a 
rarity; for when a mutton-chop is swallowed of a 
Bostonian, it gives up, knowing that there is no 
need of fighting against such inexorable digestion. 

The ladies of Boston have more color in their 
cheeks than those of many cities, and walk as 
though they would live to get round the next 
corner. It is not so fashionable to be delicate. 
They are robust in mind and always ready for 
an argument. State what you consider an indis- 
putable proposition, and they will say: "Yes, 
but then — " They are not afraid to attack the 
theology of a minister, or the jurisprudence of a 
lawyer, or the pharmacy of a doctor. If you do 
not look out, the Boston woman will throw off her 
shawl and upset your logic in a public meeting. 

We like the men and women of Boston. They 
have opinions about everything — some of them 



1 88 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

adverse to your own, but even in that case so well 
expressed that, in admiration for the rhetoric, you 
excuse the divergence of sentiment. We never 
found a half-and-half character in Boston. The 
people do not wait till they see which way the 
smoke of their neighbors' chimneys blows before 
they make up their own minds. 

The most conspicuous book on the parlor table 
of the hotels of other cities is a book of enerav- 
ings or a copy of the Bible. In some of the Bos- 
ton hotels, the prominent book on the parlor table 
is Webster s Unabridged Dictionary. You may be 
left in doubt about the Bostonian's character, but 
need not doubt his capacity to parse a sentence, 
or spell without any semblance of blunder the 
word idiosyncrasy. 

Boston, having made up its mind, sticks to it. 
Many years ago it decided that the religious so- 
cieties ought to hold a public anniversary in June, 
and it never wavers. New York is tired of these 
annual demonstrations, and goes elsewhere; but 
in the early part of every June, Boston puts its 
umbrella under its arm and starts for Tremont 
Temple, or Music Hall, determined to find an an- 
niversary, and finds it. You see on the stage the 
same spectacles that shone on the speakers ten 
years ago, and the same bald heads, for the solid 
men of Boston got in the way of wearing their 



BOSTONIANS. 1 89 

hair thin in front a quarter of a century ago, and 
all the solid men of Boston will, for the next cen- 
tury, wear their hair thin in front. 

There are fewer dandies in Boston than in most 
cities. Clothes, as a general thing, do not make 
fun of the people they sit on. The humps on the 
ladies' backs are not within two feet of being as high 
as in some of the other cities, and a dromedary could 
look at them without thinking itself caricatured. 
You see more of the outlandishness of fashion in one 
day on Broadway than in a week on any one street 
of Boston. Doubtless, Boston is just as proud as 
New York, but her pride is that of brains, and 
those, from the necessities of the case, are hidden. 

Go out on the fashionable drive of Boston, and 
you find that the horses are round limbed, and 
look as well satisfied as their owners. A restless 
man always has a thin horse. He does not give 
the creature, time to eat, wears out on him so many 
whip-lashes, and keeps jerking perpetually at the 
reins. Boston horses are, for the most part, fat, 
feel their oats, and know that the eyes of the 
world are upon them. You see, we think it no 
dishonor to a minister to admire good horses, pro- 
vided he does not trade too often, and impose a 
case of glanders and bots on his unsophisticated 
neighbor. We think that, as a minister is set up 
for an example to his flock, he ought to have the 



I90 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

best horse in the congregation. A minister is no 
more sacred when riding behind a spavined and 
ringboned nag than when whirling along after a 
horse that can swallow a mile in 2.30. 

The anniversary week in Boston closed by a 
display of flowers and fruits in Horticultural Hall. 
It was appropriate that philanthropists and Chris- 
tians, hot from discussions of moral and religious 
topics, should go in and take a bath of rose leaves 
and geraniums. Indeed, I think the sweetest an- 
niversary of the week was that of these flowers. 
A large rhododendron presided. Azaleas and ver- 
benas took part in the meeting. The Chinese 
honeysuckle and clematis joined in the doxology. 
A magnolia pronounced the benediction. And 
we went home praying for the time when the lily 
of the valley shall be planted in every heart, and 
the desert shall blossom as the rose. 




CHAPTER XXVIII. 

JONAH VERSUS THE WHALE. 

UNBELIEVERS have often told us that the 
story of the prophet swallowed by a great 
fish was an absurdity. They say that, so long in 
the stomach of the monster, the minister would 
have been digested. We have no difficulty in this 
matter. Jonah was a most unwilling guest of the 
whale. He wanted to get out. However much 
he may have liked fish, he did not want it three 
times a day and all the time. So he kept up a 
fidget, and a struggle, and a turning over, and he 
gave the whale no time to assimilate him. The 
man knew that if he was ever to get out he must 
be in perpetual motion. We know men that are 
so lethargic they would have given the matter up, 
and lain down so quietly that in a few hours they 
would have gone into flukes and fish bones, blow- 
holes and blubber. 

Now we see men all around us who have been 
swallowed by monstrous misfortunes. Some of 
them sit down on a piece of whale-bone and 

16 191 



I9 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

give up. They say : " No use ! I will never get 
back my money, or restore my good name, or 
recover my health." They float out to sea and 
are never again heard of. Others, the moment 
they go down the throat of some great trouble, 
begin immediately to plan for egress. They make 
rapid estimate of the length of the vertebrate, 
and come to the conclusion how far they arc 
in. They dig up enough spermaceti out of the 
darkness to make a light, and keep turning this 
way and that, till the first you know they are 
out. Determination to get well has much to do 
with recovered invalidism. Firm will to defeat 
bankruptcy decides financial deliverance. Never 
surrender to misfortune or discouragement. You 
can, if you are spry enough, make it as uncom- 
fortable for the whale as the whale can make it 
uncomfortable for you. There will be some place 
where you can brace your foot against his ribs, 
and some long upper tooth around which you may 
take hold, and he will be as glad to get rid of you 
for tenant as you are to get rid of him for land- 
lord. There is a way out, if you are determined 
to find it. All our sympathies are with the plain- 
tiff in the suit of 

Jonah verstis Leviathan. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

SOMETHING UNDER THE SOFA. 

NOT more than twenty-five miles from New 
York city, and not more than two years ago, 
there stood a church in which occurred a novelty. 
We promised not to tell ; but as we omit all names, 
we think ourselves warranted in writing the sketch. 
The sacred edifice had stood more than a hundred 
years, until the doors were rickety, and often stood 
open during the secular week. The window-glass 
in many places had been broken out. The shingles 
were off and the snow drifted in, and the congre- 
gation during a shower frequently sat under the 
droppings of the sanctuary. All of which would 
have been a matter for sympathy, had it not been 
for the fact that the people of the neighborhood 
were nearly all wealthy, and lived in large and 
comfortable farm-houses, making the appearance 
of their church a fit subject for satire. 

The pulpit was giving way with the general 
wreck, was unpainted, and the upholstery on book- 
board and sofa seemed calling out with Jew's voice, 
"Any old clo' ? Any old clo' ?" One Sabbath, the 
minister felt some uneasiness under the sofa while 

193 



194 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

the congregation were singing, and could not im- 
agine the cause ; but found out the next day that 
a maternal cat had made her nest there with her 
group of offspring, who had entered upon mortal 
life amid these honorable surroundings. 

Highly-favored kittens ! If they do not turn out 
well, it will not be the fault of their mother, who 
took them so early under good influences. In the 
temple of old the swallow found a nest for herself 
where she might lay her young ; but this is the 
first time we ever knew of the conference of such 
honors on the Felis domestica. It could not have 
been anything mercenary that took the old cat 
into the pulpit, for " poor as a church mouse " has 
become proverbial. Nothing but lofty aspirations 
could have taken her there, and a desire that her 
young should have advantages of high birth. If 
in the " Historical Society " there are mummied 
cats two thousand years old, much more will post 
mortem honors be due this ecclesiastical Pussy. 

We see many churches in city as well as town 
that need rehabilitation and reconstruction. Peo- 
ple of a neighborhood have no right to live in 
houses better constructed than their church. Bet- 
ter touch up the fresco, and put on a new roof, 
and tear out the old pews which ignore the shape 
of a man's back, and supersede the smoky lamps 
by clarified kerosene or cheap gas-brackets. Lower 



SOMETHING UNDER THE SOFA. 1 95 

your high pulpit that your preacher may come 
down from the Mont Blanc of his isolation and 
solitariness into the same climate of sympathy 
with his audience. Tear away the old sofa, ragged 
and spring-broken, on which the pastors of forty 
years have been obliged to sit, and see whether 
there are any cats in your antediluvian pulpit. 

Would it not be well for us all to look under 
our church sofas and see if there be anything 
lurking there that we do not suspect? A cat, in 
all languages, has been the symbol of deceit and 
spitefulness, and she is more fit for an ash-barrel 
than a pulpit. Since we heard that story of feline 
nativity, whenever we see a minister of religion, 
on some question of Christian reform, skulking 
behind a barrier, and crawling away into some 
half-and-half position on the subject of temper- 
ance or oppression, and daring not to speak out, 
instead of making his pulpit a height from which 
to hurl the truth against the enemies of God, 
turning it into a cowardly hiding-place, we say, 
"Another cat in the pulpit." 

Whenever we see a professed minister of relig- 
ion lacking in frankness of soul, deceitful in his 
friendship, shaking hands heartily when you meet 
him, but in private taking every possible oppor- 
tunity of giving you a long, deep scratch, or in 
public newspapers giving you a sly dig with the 

16* 



I96 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

claw of his pen, we say: "Another cat in the 
pulpit !" 

Once a year let all our churches be cleaned with 
soap, and sand, and mop, and scrubbing-brush, and 
the sexton not forget to give one turn of his broom 
under the pastor's chair. Would that with one 
bold and emphatic "scat!" we could drive the last 
specimen of deceitfulness and skulking from the 
American pulpit! 




CHAPTER XXX. 

THE WAY TO KEEP FRESH. 

HOW to get out of the old rut without twist- 
ing off the wheel, or snapping the shafts, or 
breaking the horse's leg, is a question not more 
appropriate to every teamster than to every Chris- 
tian worker. Having once got out of the old rut, 
the next thing is to keep out. There is nothing 
more killing than ecclesiastical humdrum. Some 
persons do not like the Episcopal Church because 
they have the same prayers every Sabbath, but 
have we not for the last ten years been hearing 
the same prayers over and over again, the pro- 
duct of a self-manufactured liturgy that has not 
the thousandth part of the excellency of those 
petitions that we hear in the Episcopal Church? 

In many of our churches sinners hear the same 
exhortations that they have been hearing for the 
last fifteen years, so that the impenitent man 
knows, the moment the exhorter clears his throat, 
just what is going to be said ; and the hearer him- 
self is able to recite the exhortation as we teach 
our children the multiplication table forward or 

197 



I98 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

backward. We could not understand the doleful 
strain of a certain brother's prayer till we found 
out that he composed it on a fast day during the 
yellow fever in 1821, and has been using it ever 
since. 

There are laymen who do not like to hear a 
sermon preached the second time who yet give 
their pastors the same prayer every week at the 
devotional meeting — that is, fifty-two times the 
year, with occasional slices of it between meals. 
If they made any spiritual advancement, they would 
have new wants to express and new thanksgivings 
to offer. But thev have been for a decade of vears 
stuck fast in the mud. and they splash the same 
thine on you everv week. We need a universal 
church-cleaning bv which all canting and humdrum 
shall be scrubbed out. 

If we would keep fresh, let us make occasional 
excursion into other circles than our own. Artists 
generally eo with artists, farmers with farmers, 
mechanics with mechanics, clergymen with clergy- 
men, Christian workers with Christian workers. 
But there is nothing that sooner freshens one up 
than to get in a new group, mingling with people 
whose thought and work run in different channels. 
For a change put the minister on the hay-rack and 
the farmer in the clergyman's studv. 

Let us read books not in our own line. After 



THE WAY TO KEEP ERESH. 1 99 

a man has been delving in nothing but theological 
works for three months, a few pages in the Patent- 
office Report will do him more good than Doctor 
Dick on "The Perseverance of the Saints." Bet- 
ter than this, as a diversion, is it to have some 
department of Natural History or Art to which 
you may turn, a case of shells or birds, or a season 
ticket to some picture gallery. If you do nothing 
but play on one string of the bass-viol, you will 
wear it out and get no healthy tune. Better take 
the bow and sweep it clear across in one grand 
swirl, bringing all four strings and all eight stops 
into requisition. 

Let us go much into the presence of the natural 
world if we can get at it. Especially if we live in 
great thoroughfares let us make occasional flight 
to the woods and the mountains. Even the trees 
in town seem artificial. They dare not speak 
where there are so many to listen, and the hya- 
cinth and geranium in flower-pots in the window 
seem to know they are on exhibition. If we would 
once in a while romp the fields, we would not have 
so many last year's rose leaves in our sermons, 
but those just plucked, dewy and redolent. 

We cannot see the natural world through the 
books or the eyes of others. All this talk about 
" babbling brooks " is a stereotyped humbug. 
Brooks never " babble." To babble is to be unin- 



200 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

telligent and imperfect of tongue. But when the 
brooks speak, they utter lessons of beauty that 
the dullest ear can understand. We have wan- 
dered from the Androscoggin in Maine to the 
Tombigbee in Alabama, and we never found a 
brook that "babbled." The people babble who 
talk about them, not knowing what a brook is. 
We have heard about the nightingale and the 
morning lark till we tire of them. Catch for 
your next prayer-meeting talk a chewink or a 
brown thresher. It is high time that we hoist our 
church-windows, especially those over the pulpit, 
and let in some fresh air from the fields and 
mountains. 




CHAPTER XXXI. 

CHRISTMAS BELLS. 

THE sexton often goes into the tower on a sad 
errand. He gives a strong pull at the rope, 
and forth from the tower goes a dismal sound that 
makes the heart sink. But he can now go up the 
old stairs with a lithe step and pull quick and 
sharp, waking up all the echoes of cavern and hill 
with Christmas bells. The days of joy have come, 
days of reunion, days of congratulation. " Behold 
I bring you good tidings of great joy that shall be 
to all people." 

First, let the bells ring at the birth of Jesus ! 
Mary watching, the camels moaning, the shepherds 
rousing up, the angels hovering, all Bethlehem 
stirring. What a night! Out of its black wing 
is plucked the pen from which to write the bright- 
est songs of earth and the richest doxologies of 
heaven. Let camel or ox stabled that night in 
Bethlehem, after the burden-bearing of the day, 
stand and look at Him who is to carry the burdens 
of the world. Put back the straw and hear the 
first cry of Him who is come to assuage the 

lamentation of all ages. 

201 



202 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Christmas bells ring out the peace of nations ! 
We want on our standards less of the lion and 
eagle and more of the dove. Let all the cannon 
be dismounted, and the war-horses change their 
gorgeous caparisons for plough-harness. Let us 
have fewer bullets and more bread. Life is too 
precious to dash it out against the brick casements. 
The first " Peace Society" was born in the clouds, 
and its resolution was passed unanimously by an- 
gelic voices, " Peace on earth, good-will to men." 

Christmas bells ring in family reunions ! The 
rail-trains crowded with children coming home. 
The poultry, fed as never since they were born, 
stand wondering at the farmer's generosity. The 
markets are full of massacred barnyards. The 
great table will be spread and crowded with two, 
or three, or four generations. Plant the fork 
astride the breast-bone, and with skillful twitch, 
that we could never learn, give to all the hungry 
lookers-on a specimen of holiday anatomy. Mary 
is disposed to soar, give her the wing. The boy 
is fond of music, °qve him the drum-stick. The 
minister is dining with you, give him the parson's 
nose. May the joy reach from grandfather, who 
is so dreadful old he can hardly find the way to 
his plate, down to the baby in the high chair with 
one smart pull of the table-cloth upsetting the 
gravy into the cranberry. Send from your table 




CHRISTMAS BELLS. 



CHRISTMAS BELLS. 205 

a liberal portion to the table of the poor, some of 
the white meat as well as the dark, not confining 
your generosity to gizzards and scraps. Do not, 
as in some families, keep a plate and chair for 
those who are dead and gone. Your holiday feast 
would be but poor fare for them : they are at a 
better banquet in the skies. 

Let the whole land be full of chime and carol. 
Let bells, silver and brazen, take their sweetest 
voice, and all the towers of Christendom rain 
music. 

We wish all our friends a Merry Christmas. 

Let them hang up their stockings ; and if Santa 

Claus has any room for us in his sleigh, we will 

get in and ride down their chimney, upsetting all 

over the hearth a thousand good wishes. 
17 




CHAPTER XXXII. 

THE MONDA YISH FEELING. 

IT is just fifteen minutes of five by the clock on 
my mantel, and Monday morning. Heaven is 
looking in at both windows — the sun rising with a 
very red eye, as if it had not slept much last night. 
The birds are all up, some singing, but two of 
them seem to be quarreling, as if they had had 
trouble in the choir yesterday. The world never 
before looked so fair from my window. Can it be 
that there is any such thing as trouble ? I have 
waded up to my study-table, not like the Israelites 
coming dry-shod, but through a bath-tub and 
nothing but dullness drowned. 

Thank God for water and a Turkish towel ! 
Alas for those who have only an old-time wash- 
basin at the spout outside the front door, and who 
think they have done their duty when they have 
cleansed their finger-tips and the corners of their 
eyes ! A continent, with the Atlantic Ocean on 
one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other, ought 
to take the hint and be very clean. 

206 



THE MONDA YISH FEELING. 20"J 

I wonder if on this Monday morning all the 
world is rested ? No, no ! Many of the best 
people of the world feel Mondayish. They over- 
did the Sunday and had no rest. They rose at 
six to study their Bible-lesson. They attended 
two preaching services, and had a hankering after 
the third. They went twice to a Sabbath-school. 
They took part in a prayer meeting. They visited 
two of the sick. They have been on a religious 
spree and are drunk with meetings. Monday 
morning: is a weariness to them. The devil 
knows they are good, and is trying to work them 
to death, and get them out of the way. They are 
beckoning to their undertaker, and committing 
suicide with golden extract of over- worked Sun- 
day. 

Now, every man is entitled to a rest. He sins 
when at least once a week he does not take it. 
On Sabbath let him sleep an hour longer in the 
morning, or snatch up a nap in the afternoon, or 
put on his slippers for a little while, with his feet 
up on the next chair, and make himself believe at 
any rate that he is resting. Doing too many things 
on Sunday, he does nothing well. He must take 
time to cool off. It is dangerous to load a cannon 
while the touch-hole is hot. Some Christians serve 
God so tremendously on Sunday that they are 
cross and crabbed all the week. Every Monday 



2G3 ar:i::d the tea-table. 

morning ouorht to be set to the tune of "Ariel"' 01 
"Antioch," and nor to "Windham" or "Naomi." 

Many of the ministers feel Mondayish. They 
rise this morning with their mouth tasting badly, 
and eo about stretching- and yawning as thou 
they were getting the chills and fever — the mean- 
est thine a man eyer Q-ers. Saturday study makes 
this. One who has been two consecutiye days on 
the strain must feel the bad reaction. He took all 
Saturday to load the gun. and all Sunday to shoot 
i: off and the gun has kicked. 

Saturday afternoon free from work is a cure 
for Mondayishness. If you want a Sunday to sail 
well, you ouofht to launch it Saturday afternoon. 
If a minister has to study exhausting' the latter 
part of the week., it is generally because he has 
been lazy in the former part of the week. There 
is nothing- that so hurts a sermon as to iam it be- 
tween the wheels of Saturday night and Sunday 
morning. One of the ablest ministers of the Re- 
formed Church used to say that he did all his hard 
mental work after ten o'clock Saturday night. At 
that late hour he would take to his study a tea-pot 
and pack of first-rate cigars and go at his two 
sermons. He quit life early and went away, com- 
pelled to leaye behind him his tea-pot and box of 
cigars. I should rather go up in almost any other 
chariot than in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Xot 



THE MOXDA YISH FEELING. 209 

Saturday night, but Wednesday and Thursday 
are the best cradles in which to rock a sermon 
after it has been born. 

The Mondayish feeling sometimes comes to the 
ministry because that is the day the clerical pro- 
fession do what they call "odds and ends," and 
visit the sick. Instead of taking it easy that 
morning, they are worried about the many errands 
they have to do. Monday is a poor day for visit- 
ing the sick. It is bad for the minister and the 
invalid to whom he goes. When I am sick, save 
me from a minister who himself has " the dumps." 
We need to be strong when we go to help the 
weak. What the sick most need is a dose of sun- 
shine ; and how shall we pour it out for them un- 
less we have a steady hand? There is no use of 
going in to sit on the bedside and help the invalid 
groan. Better take to him your tuning-fork and 
give him the pitch of " the new song." Do not 
spend Monday in rushing about ; " odds and ends" 
have killed many a minister. Sunday is a trying 
day ; let Saturday on one side of it, and Monday 
on the other side of it, take hold its arms and help 
it through. Do not spend Monday in going round 
to see " how the sermon took." If it was faithful, 
I warrant that in some quarters it did not take at 
all. Do not ask a child afterward whether he 
enjoys calomel and jalap ; of course he does not. 

17* 



2IO AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

When I preach a sermon on Sunday that makes 
" the fur fly," I spend Monday at Coney Island. 

The Mondayish feeling often comes to the min- 
ister through worriment at the inefficiency of Sun- 
day's work. But what is the use of fretting if we 
did as well as we could ? We ought not to expect 
to make "a ten-strike" at every roll. What 
though the sermon was spoiled by the poor ven- 
tilation of the church, or by the titteration in the 
gallery, or the elder with creaky shoes who went 
out twice during the sermon to see what was the 
matter, or the old man's clearing his throat with a 
racket that seemed to imply that he had taken a 
contract for removing all the colds of a lifetime at 
one spit? Do not let us fret over the poor ser- 
mons of yesterday, for brooding over them will 
only hatch more of the same breed. Besides that, 
our most insignificant effort may be raised in 
greatest power. Christ used spittle to cure the 
blind man. 

I write these things for young ministers just 
starting. Formerly, Mondays almost killed me ; 
but by observing the two or three rules above 
mentioned, Monday has come to be the brightest 
day of all the week. As I go down the street I 
can hardly keep my feet to the pavement, and go 
round the corner with a skip, first having glanced 
both ways to see that nobody is looking. Let 



THE MONDA YISH FEELING. 



211 



Monday be the golden beach of the Christian 
Sabbath. Its pebbles are pearls, and the surf that 
strikes it are the songs of heaven, like the voice 
of many waters. Next to the Sabbath in joyful 
experiences stands Monday. Two blissful days ! 
I am glad they have been married. 




CHAPTER XXXIII. ' 

D. S.. M. 

TT ^E are glad to see that the emperor of Aus- 
\ \ tria has bestowed upon an American in- 
ventor of sewing machines the " Imperial order of 
Francis Joseph," which, in our climate might be 
translated to mean D. 5. M. — Doctor of Sewing 
Machines. 

We do not know why the learned professions, 
so called, should have all the titles. Why not 
treat as honorably the work of the hand as the 
work of the brain, or that which employs both 
hand and brain ? We know men who are doine 
nothing for the bettering of the world's condition 
— great hulks of laziness and obesity — who have 
fastened to the end of their name titles as long as 
the tail of a kite: not a modern Chinese kite, but 
one of the splendid old-fashioned kites pretty much 
all tail, with appendages that looked as if a clothes- 
line with a whole week's washing were bein^ trans- 
lated: a frail, professional name made to carry a 
big string of D. D., LL.D., F. R. S., S. T. P., 
X. Y. Z., etc.; while some man who has lightened 

212 



D. S. M. 213 

the labor of a continent, and saved the lives of 
ten thousand sewing women, is called by the name 
of his infancy. 

We cannot see the practical use of any title at 
all, if our mother has given us a good name to 
start with. We like the Quaker way of calling 
people by their first name. But if titles are to be 
given, let them be distributed among those who 
are eminent in any useful employment. 

If a merchant show great skill in his business, 
if he stand head and shoulders above others on 
the street in his judgment of commercial vicissi- 
tude, if he be a pattern of integrity and large- 
heartedness as well as intelligence, why not, on 
Exchange, or somewhere else, confer upon him 
some honorable recognition? What that title 
shall be we cannot now suggest ; but till you can 
get a better title for such vigorous merchant, call 
him D. Y. S. — Doctor of the Yard Stick. Why 
not? 

If a farmer know the best order of crops, and 
can raise thirty bushels of oats where his neighbor 
'can raise only fifteen, if, while other orchards are 
being devoured, he succeed in exterminating the 
curculio from his premises, and turn a field of 
Canada thistles and mullein stalk into a garden of 
the Lord, and can work miracles by subsoil plough 
and drainage, and, while others are having their 



214 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

corn uprooted by the birds, sets up in his own 
fields a scare-crow so natural that all the crows 
within fifty miles have heard of the horrible ap- 
parition, and a young man, crossing the lots at 
midnight, from a visit to his sweetheart, thinks 
himself assaulted in the middle of the corn-field 
by a highwayman with old straw hat and outspread 
arms, whom he shoots through the heart: in a 
word, if he be the best agriculturist in all the 
neighborhood, — why not confer upon him a title 
suggestive of his superiority? If you think of 
nothing else, call him T. B. A., Thirty Bushels to 
the Acre. 

In this land, where there is but very little royal 
blood, and most of that very watery, where nearly 
all our hands are hard because we are obliged to 
work, do not let us put more honor on the man 
who can make a speech or write a book than upon 
one who reforms agriculture, or regulates mer- 
chandise, or invents a labor-saving machine ; nor 
compel our practical workers to go abroad for the 
bestowal of the "Imperial order of Francis Joseph," 
when our grateful American people ought to be 
willing to confer upon those whose severe work 
has never yet been recognized the " Imperial order 
of Homespun and Hard Knuckles." 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE SIN OF SMALL TYPE. 

EVERY few years there goes through China 
the ophthalmy, a disease of the eye which 
leaves thousands of people in partial or total 
blindness. Small print is doing the same work in 
this country. There are type-founders blasting 
the eyesight of the people. There are publishers 
who pride themselves on the number of words 
they can get within a square inch, and under the 
process we are suffering a great national ophthalmy. 
Better not read at all than kill your eyes with 
small print. God gives us only two organs of 
sight, and the penalty of trifling with them is life- 
long twilight or midnight of vision. There is con- 
sequently a great rush upon opticians for spec- 
tacles. Girls and boys of fifteen at school must 
have their eye-glass astride the nose. 

There is a fearful sarcasm in the action of the 
man who comes on the railway-train at Albany 
with spectacles for sale, as much as to say, " With 
those fine-print books and newspapers you have 
been slaying your eyes all the way from Buffalo ; 

215 



2l6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

I come in as an optical undertaker, just to try on 
you this coffin of spectacles." Young men and 
maidens, nothing you can hang on the bridge of 
your nose in the way of eye-glasses can give you 
such dignity or grace as a clear eye, blue or black 
or hazel, unharmed by dissipation, or unextin- 
guished by the type-setters. 

Authors and publishers are often chagrined at 
the blunders of the printing-press. A Frenchman, 
having counted three hundred typographical errors 
in his favorite book, gave up the ghost, and got 
out of the world as soon as he could. We won- 
der that a similar departure was not witnessed 
when one of our popular magazines was, by mis- 
take of the printer-boy, called " The Epileptic Re- 
view." But the worst of all typographical errors 
is that of small type. 

Let publishers not forget the failing sight of the 
old. As age comes on, father and mother cannot 
go out as much as they used to, and are more de- 
pendent upon reading for entertainment. Put not 
before their diminished sight typography that blurs 
and confounds them. In plain print tell them the 
news of the world out of which they go, and the 
news of the world which they are about to enter. 
Let the hymn-book, and the Bible, and the relig- 
ious newspaper be in distinct letter-press. 

The poorest compliment ever paid to the Lord's 



THE SIN OF SMALL TYPE. 2\J 

prayer was the cutting it in small letters on a five- 
cent piece. It is a hard thing for an octogenarian 
to " read his title clear " in type smaller than non- 
pareil or agate. It is a grand thing to have a page 
so plain that old age can read it either with or 
without spectacles. Mother had two pairs — her 
" near-sighted " spectacles and her " far-sighted " 
ones. She wore them both at once — one upon 
the forehead, the other on the nose, the distance 
of the object deciding which pair she would use. 
But one day she took off the " far-sighted " spec- 
tacles with which she had often looked toward 
heaven, and put on the "near-sighted" ones: it 
was just as she went into the Gate. 

18 




^e^. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

POOR PREACHING. 

THERE never was a time when in all denomi- 
nations of Christians there was so much at- 
tractive sermonizing as to-day. Princeton, and 
Middletown, and Rochester, and New Brunswick, 
are sending into the ministry a large number of 
sharp, earnest, consecrated men. Stupidity, after 
being regularly ordained, is found to be no more 
acceptable to the people than before, and the 
title of Doctorate cannot any longer be substituted 
for brains. Perhaps, however, there may get to be 
a surfeit of fine discourses. Indeed, we have so 
many appliances for making bright and incisive 
preachers that we do not know but that after a 
while, when we want a sleepy discourse as an ano- 
dyne, we shall have to go to the ends of the earth 
to find one ; and dull sermons may be at a pre- 
mium, congregations of limited means not being 
able to afford them at all ; and so we shall have to 
fall back on chloral or morphine. 

Are we not, therefore, doing a humanitarian 

218 



POOR PREACHING. . 2IQ 

work when we give to congregations some rules 
by which, if they want it, they may always have 
poor preaching ? 

First. Keep your minister poor. There is noth- 
ing more ruinous than to pay a pastor too much 
salary. Let every Board of Trustees look over 
their books and see if they have erred in this 
direction ; and if so, let them cut down the minis- 
ter's wages. There are churches which pay their 
pastors eight hundred dollars per annum. What 
these good men do with so much money we can- 
not imagine. Our ministers must be taken in. If 
by occasional fasting for a day our Puritan fathers 
in New England became so good, what might we 
not expect of our ministers if we kept them in 
perpetual fast? No doubt their spiritual capacity 
would enlarge in proportion to their shrinkage at 
the waistcoat. The average salary of ministers in 
the United States is about six hundred dollars. 
Perhaps by some spiritual pile-driver we might 
send it down to five hundred dollars ; and then 
the millennium, for the lion by that time would 
be so hungry he would let the lamb lie down in- 
side of him. We would suggest a very econom- 
ical plan : give your spiritual adviser a smaller in- 
come, and make it up by a donation visit. When 
everything else fails to keep him properly humble, 
that succeeds. We speak from experience. Four- 



220 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

teen years ago we had one, and it has been a 
means of grace to us ever since. 

Secondly. For securing poor preaching, wait on 
your pastor with frequent committees. Let three 
men some morning tie their horses at the domi- 
nie's gate, and go in and tell him how to preach, 
and pray, and visit. Tell him all the disagreeable 
things said about him for six months, and what a 
great man his predecessor was, how much plainer 
his wife dressed, and how much better his children 
behaved. Pastoral committees are not like the 
small-pox — you can have them more than once; 
they are more like the mumps, which you may 
have first on one side and then on the other. If, 
after a man has had the advantage of being man- 
ipulated by three church committees, he has any 
pride or spirit left, better give him up as incor- 
rigible. 

Thirdly. To secure poor preaching, keep the 
minister on the trot. Scold him when he comes 
to see you because he did not come before, and 
tell him how often you were visited by the former 
pastor. Oh, that blessed predecessor! Strange 
they did not hold on to the angel when they had 
him. Keep your minister going. Expect him to 
respond to every whistle. Have him at all the 
tea-parties and " the raisings." Stand him in the 
draught of the door at the funeral — a frequent 



POOR PREACHING. 221 

way of declaring a pulpit vacant. Keep him busy 
all the week in out-door miscellaneous work; and 
if at the end of that time he cannot preach a weak 
discourse, send for us, and we will show him how 
to do it. Of course there are exceptions to all 
rules ; but if the plan of treatment we have pro- 
posed be carried out, we do not see that any 
church in city or country need long be in want of 
poor preaching. 

18* 




CHAPTER XXXVI. 

ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE. 

• ~\ TAY I get on with you ?" I asked an engi- 

^\JL neer on the Pacific Railroad, at a station 
six or seven thousand feet above the level of the 
sea 

" Certainly ^ he said : u but hold fast tight, or you 
may fall off 

•Toot! toot!" went the whistle, and the long 
anaconda of a rail-train first went crawling along" 
the rocks, but soon took on fearful momentum. 
Sittinq- in "Pullman's Palace Car," looking out of 
the window, the passenger gets no idea oi the 
speed of the train : but close by the engineer, and 
feeling the nervous quiver and jump of the iron 

,:rser. you see the "mountains skip like rams, 
and the little hills like lambs." 

The door of the locomotive furnace clangs open, 
and the flames rave as though they would leap out 
to devour, and the fireman jars the coal into the 
racing jaws o( the monster. The engineer : 
his hand on the iron bit that controls the speed, 
and seems to use no more exertion than a doctor 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE. 223 

feeling the pulse of a child. Indeed, the locomo- 
tive, to the engineer, is not a mere machine, but 
animate. He talks to it, seems almost to pat it 
lovingly on the neck. He is proud of it. There 
is a warm understanding between the two, and in 
occasional spurts of steam the locomotive seems to 
take voice and answer its rider. An engine never 
hurts its master, save in the effort to throw the 
passengers. 

But the engineer, though sitting so placid, is 
wide awake. He is kept on duty only four hours 
in the day, and all the energies of body and soul 
cluster in his vigilant eye and quick thumb. Two 
hundred lives hang on his wrist. 

We plunge into a snow-shed with infinite clatter, 
every board and beam beating back the deafening 
roar of the Pacific express. As we rush on, the 
prairie-dogs skulk into their holes, or sit on their 
hind-quarters, with fore-feet lifted, as much as to 
say, " What next !" The antelopes scamper over 
the plain. We ride unimpeded where less than 
two years ago the buffaloes stopped the train as 
the herds stampeded across the track ; and along 
here the savages careered on their ponies. 

You see here and there groups of red men, 
with long hair, and cheeks dashed with war-paint, 
ringed ears, and a superfluity of dirt that buries 
your last romantic notion about the " noble red man 



224 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

of the forest." The air is laden with the breath 

of the cedar, madrona, manzanita and buckeye. 
Here we are passing through what seem the ruins 
of castles, and temples, and cities, and calling up 
to mind Petra, and Pompeii,, and Nineveh, and 
Thebes ; but these ruins on either side our track 
must have been vast abodes, where giants might 
have lived, till the Titans began here to play leap- 
frog and turn somersault. 

Now the whistle lets off a wild scream ; a cow 
and calf on the track. The cow we cut into halves, 
and the calf with broken leo;s tumbles over into 
the ditch. I wonder if that man just ahead will 
get off in time? Perhaps he is deaf! Perhaps he 
is crazy, and wants to be run over ! Neither. In 
time to save himself he switches off and robs the 
coroner. 

Hold your breath ! Ravine a thousand feet 
deep on this side ! Embankment a thousand feet 
up on the other! As we turn the curve the engi- 
neer pulls the steam-valve, and the silence that 
chiefly reigned here for six thousand vears lets 
slip all its hounds of echo and reverberation. 

Whew ! how we fly ! If a bolt break, or a 
truck fall, or a rock dislodge, we are in eternity! 
Innumerable varieties of flower break their ala- 
baster at the feet of the cliffs ; but yonder the 
mountain tops are blooming into the white lily of 




THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE. 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE. 227 

everlasting snow. Bridges, high, narrow, tremen- 
dous, that creak and tremble under the pressure 
of the train. 

A tunnel ! Ink-black, midnight doubled, damp- 
ness that never saw the sun ; while far ahead is a 
hint of sunlight peering through a hole that looks 
about the size of the arch of a mouse-trap, but 
which widens till at last it is large enough to let a 
whole train escape into the golden day. 

Out there is the old emigrant road, with occa- 
sionally the skeleton of a cow or horse, or the 
wreck of a wagon that hopelessly broke down on 
the way ; and here a mound, and a rough stone at 
the head of it, that show where some worn trav- 
eler finished his journey in those times when in 
one year across these heights went five thousand 
wagons, pulled by seven thousand mules and thirty 
thousand yoke of oxen. 

More rocks heave in sight, and at the point 
where all the grandeurs converge, in white paint 
splashed on the granite boulders, is inscribed 

drake's plantation bitters. 
s. t. — 1860 — X. ; 

leaving room enough for Helmbold's Buchu, and 
the popular announcement, "We all take Hoben- 
sack's Worm-Syrup !" After the Indians have 
seen this advertisement on the rocks they will 



228 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

have no more to say about their "Big Medi- 



cine." 



Now we come along by bluffs where the red 
man could not make a trail, and where laborers in 
constructing the rail-track were held from the 
overhanging cliffs by ropes. No fear of the track 
breaking, for the Chinese are busy all along the 
road — happy, industrious, more cleanly than the 
Irish or American laborers by the track. Capital 
railroad builders are these Chinese, first-rate cooks, 
and their coming all through the land will deliver 
housekeepers from their slavery to the present 
tyranny of the kitchen. They are the princes of 
the smoothing-iron. 

We shall be a cleaner nation when the Chi- 
nese wash for us. They do not send back your 
shirts melancholy with " blueing," and minus but- 
tons torn off, and with bosoms stiff as a shingle. 
They use no watering-pot to sprinkle the clothes 
on the grass ; but taking the water in their 
mouth, till their cheeks stand out with bloat, they 
let the liquid fly over the linen with astounding 
ingenuity of squirt. Clear the track ! Ching- 
Chang, Wo-Hong, Fu-Choo and Sing-Hi, with 
your long pig-tails! We cannot afford to run 
over you ! 

And now the night begins to fall, and the train 
goes ploughing through the darkness. The great 



ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE. 229 

burning eye of the locomotive peers through, and 
flashes far ahead upon the wild scene. 

The grizzly bear, the panther, the nighthawk, 
the cormorant, the pelican, the grosbeak, the eagle, 
that kept aloof while the day shone, may venture 
nearer now, if they dare. Oh how we fly ! The 
rush of the wind, the jamming of the car-coupling, 
the clang of the wheels, the steam hiss, the fierce 
shower of sparks that set the night on fire, the 
shooting past of rocks five hundred feet high, fol- 
lowed by a precipice a thousand feet deep, make 
the breath short, and the heart thump, and the 
very scalp lift. 

How the shadows shuffle ! How the crags 
shiver ! How the echoes rave ! An express train 
at night on the Rocky Mountains ! The irresist- 
ible trampling the immovable I Yet the way 
smoothed down by human engineering. Then it 
will not be so difficult to prepare the way for a 
grander coming when the mountains shall be made 
low, and the crooked straight, and rough places 
plain, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, 
and all flesh shall see it together ! 

" I guess I will get off now," I said to the engi- 
neer. "All rio-ht!" said he; "but look out and 
not break your neck over that switch out yonder r 
With my mind full of the rush and thunder of the 
day, I went to sleep, and dreamt of the scenes into 



230 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

which we were being introduced. The land of big 
trees, three hundred and twenty feet high, one 
hundred and twelve around (see Hutchins); big 
waterfalls, two thousand six hundred feet down 
(see Whitney); big bears, of two thousand pounds' 
weight (see the hunters); big onions, a foot across 
the top, and beets of a hundred and twenty-seven 
pounds each (see Dr. Todd); big rocks, big proph- 
ecies and bigger hearts. Golden-footed, vine- 
crowned California ! 




CHAPTER XXXVII. 

SHELVES A MAN'S INDEX. 

IN Chelsea, a suburb of London, and on a nar- 
row street, with not even a house in front, but, 
instead thereof, a long range of brick wall, is the 
house of Thomas Carlyle. You go through a 
narrow hall and turn to the left, and are in the 
literary workshop where some of the strongest 
thunderbolts of the world have been forged. The 
two front windows have on them scant curtains of 
reddish calico, hung at the top of the lower sash, 
so as not to keep the sun from looking down, but 
to hinder the. street from looking in. 

The room has a lounge covered with the same 
material, and of construction such as you would 
find in the plainest house among the mountains. 
It looks as if it had been made by an author not 
accustomed to saw or hammer, and in the inter- 
stices of mental work. On the wall are a few 
wood-cuts in plain frames or pinned against the 
wall; also a photograph of Mr. Carlyle taken one 
day, as his family told us, when he had a violent 
toothache and could attend to nothing else. It is 

W 231 



232 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

his favorite picture, though it gives him a face 
more than ordinarily severe and troubled. 

In long shelves, unpainted and unsheltered by 
glass or door, is the library of the world-renowned 
thinker. The books are worn, as though he had 
bought them to read. Many of them are un- 
common books, the titles of which we never saw 
before. American literature is almost ignored, 
while Germany monopolizes many of the spaces. 
We noticed the absence of theological works, 
save those of Thomas Chalmers, whose name 
and genius he wellnigh worshiped. The carpets 
are old and worn and faded — not because he 
cannot afford better, but because he would have 
his home a perpetual protest against the world's 
sham. It is a place not calculated to give inspira- 
tion to a writer. No easy-chairs, no soft divans, 
no wealth of upholstery, but simply a place to 
work and stay. Never having heard a word 
about it, it was nevertheless just such a place as 
we expected. 

We had there confirmed our former theory 
of a man's study as only a part of himself, or 
a piece of tight-fitting clothing. It is the shell 
of the tortoise, just made to fit the tortoise's back. 
Thomas Carlyle could have no other kind of a 
workshop. What would he do with a damask- 
covered table, or a gilded inkstand, or an uphol- 



"SHELVES A MAN'S INDEX. 233 

stered window? Starting with the idea that the 
intellect is all and the body naught but an adjunct 
or appendage, he will show that the former can 
live and thrive without any approval of the latter. 
He will give the intellect all costly stimulus, and 
send the body supperless to bed. Thomas Car- 
lyle taken as a premise, this shabby room is the 
inevitable conclusion. Behold the principle. 

We have a poetic friend. The backs of his 
books are scrolled and transfigured. A vase of 
japonicas, even in mid-winter, adorns his writing- 
desk. The hothouse is as important to him as 
the air. There are soft engravings on the wall. 
This study-chair was made out of the twisted roots 
of a banyan. A dog, sleek-skinned, lies on the 
mat, and gets up as you come in. There stand in 
vermilion all the poets from Homer to Tennyson. 
Here and there are chamois heads and pressed 
seaweed. He writes on gilt-edged paper with a 
gold pen and handle twisted with a serpent. His 
inkstand is a mystery of beauty which unskilled 
hands dare not touch, lest the ink spring at him 
from some of the open mouths, or sprinkle on him 
from the bronze wings, or with some unexpected 
squirt dash into his eyes the blackness of darkness. 

We have a very precise friend. Everything is 
in severe order. Finding his door-knob in the 
dark, you could reason out the position of stove, 



234 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE.* 

and chair, and table ; and placing an arrow at the 
back of the book on one end of the shelf, it would 
fly to the other end, equally grazing all the bind- 
ings. It is ten years since John Milton, or Robert 
Southev. or Sir William Hamilton have been out 
of their places, and that was when an ignoramus 
broke into the study. The volumes of the ency- 
clopedias never change places. Manuscripts un- 
biotted, and free from interlineation, and labeled. 
The spittoon knows its place in the corner, as if 
treated bv tobacco chewers with oft indignity. 
You could £0 into that studv with vour eves shut, 
turn around, and without feeling for the chair throw 
yourself back with perfect confidence that the fur- 
niture would catch you. Xo better does a hat fit 
his head, or shoe his foot, or the glove his hand, 
than the studv fits his whole nature. 

We have a facetious friend. You pick off the 
corner of his writing-table Xoctcs Ambrosiancz or 
the London Punch. His chair is wide, so that he 
can easily roll off on the floor when he wants a 
£ood time at laucrhinof. j-^ s inkstand is a monkev, 
with the variations. His study-cap would upset a 
judge's risibilities. Scrap-books with droll carica- 
tures and faccticz. An odd stove, exciting vour 
wonder as to where the coal is put in or the poker 
thrust for a shaking. All the works of Douglass 
Jerrold, and Sydney Smith, and Sterne, the scala- 



SHELVES A MAN'S INDEX. 235 

wag ecclesiastic. India-rubber faces capable of 
being squashed into anything. Puzzles that you 
cannot untangle. The four walls covered with 
cuts and engravings sheared from weekly pic- 
torials and recklessly taken from parlor-table 
books. Prints that put men and women into 
hopeless satire. 

We have a friend of many peculiarities. Enter- 
ing his house, you find nothing in the place where 
you expected it. Don Quixote with all its wind- 
mills mixed up with Dr. Dick on the Sacra- 
ments, Mark Twain's Jumping Frog and Char- 
nock on the Attributes. Passing across the room, 
you stumble against the manuscript of his last 
lecture, or put your foot in a piece of pie 
that has fallen off the end of the writing-table. 
You mistake his essay on the " Copernican 
System " for blotting-paper. Many of his books 
are bereft of the binding ; and in attempting to 
replace the covers, Hudibras gets the cover which 
belongs to Barnes on the Acts of the Apostles. 
An earthquake in the room would be more apt 
to improve than to unsettle. There are marks 
where the inkstand became unstable and made a 
handwriting on the wall that even Daniel could 
not have interpreted. If, some fatal da}', the wife 
or housekeeper come in, while the occupant is 
absent, to " clear up," a damage is done that re- 

19* 



236 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

quires weeks to repair. For many days the ques- 
tion is, " Where is my pen ? Who has the con- 
cordance ? What on earth has become of the 
dictionary? Where is the paper-cutter?" Work 
is impeded, patience lost, engagements are broken, 
because it was not understood that the study is a 
part of the student's life, and that you might as 
well trv to change the knuckles to the inside of 
the hand, or to set the eyes in the middle of the 
forehead, as to make the man of whom we speak 
keep his pen on the rack, or his books off the 
floor, or the blotting-paper straight in the port- 
folio. 

The study is a part of the mental development. 
Don't blame a man for the style of his literary 
apartments any more than you would for the color 
• of his hair or the shape of his nose. If Hobbes 
carries his study with him, and his pen and his 
inkstand in the top of his cane, so let him carry 
them. If Lamartine can best compose while walk- 
ing his park, paper and pencil in hand, so let him 
ramble. If Robert Hale thinks easiest when lying 
flat on his back, let him be prostrate. If Lamasius 
writes best surrounded by children, let loose on 
him the whole nursery. Don't criticise Charles 
Dickens because he threw all his study windows 
wide open and the shades up. It may fade the 
carpet, but it will pour sunshine into the hearts of 



SHELVES A MAN'S INDEX. 237 

a million readers. If Thomas Carlyle chose to 
call around an ink-spattered table Goethe, and 
Schiller, and Jean Paul Frederick Richter, and dis- 
sect the shams of the world with a plain goose- 
quill, so be it. The horns of an ox's head are not 
more certainly a part of the ox than Thomas Car- 
lyle's study and all its appointments are a part of 
Thomas Carlyle. 

The gazelle will have soft fur, and the lion a 
shaggy hide, and the sanctum sanctorum is the 
student's cuticle. 




CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

BE HA VI OR A T CHURCH 

AROUND the door of country meeting-houses 
it has always been the custom for the people 
to gather before church and after church for so- 
cial intercourse and the shaking of hands. Per- 
haps because we, ourselves, were born in the 
country and have never got over it, the custom 
pleases us. In the cities we arrive the last mo- 
ment before service and go away the first moment 
after. We act as though the church were a rail-car, 
into which we go when the time for starting arrives, 
and we get out again as soon as the Depot of 
the Doxology is reached. We protest against this 
business w r ay of doing things. Shake hands when 
the benediction is pronounced with those who sat 
before and those who sat behind you. Meet the 
people in the aisle, and give them Christian salu- 
tation. Postponement of the dining-hour for fif- 
teen minutes will damage neither you nor the din- 
ner. That is the moment to say a comforting 
word to the man or woman in trouble. The ser- 
mon was preached to the people in general ; it is 
your place to apply it to the individual heart. 

238 



. BEHAVIOR AT CHURCH. 239 

The church aisle may be made the road to 
heaven. Many a man who was unaffected by what 
the minister said has been captured for God by the 
Christian word of an unpretending layman on the 
way out. 

You may call it personal magnetism, or natural 
cordiality, but there are some Christians who have 
such an ardent way of shaking hands after meet- 
ing that it amounts to a benediction. Such greeting 
is. not made with the left hand. The left hand is 
good for a great many things, for instance to hold 
a fork or twist a curl, but it was never made to 
shake hands with, unless you have lost the use of 
the right. Nor is it done by the tips of the fingers 
laid loosely in the palm of another. Nor is it done 
with a glove on. Gloves are good to keep out the 
cold and make one look well, but have them so 
they can easily be removed, as they should be, for 
they are non-conductors of Christian magnetism. 
Make bare the hand. Place it in the palm of your 
friend. Clench the fingers across the back part of 
the hand you grip. Then let all the animation of 
your heart rush to the shoulder, and from there to 
the elbow, and then through the fore-arm and 
through the wrist, till your friend gets the whole 
charge of gospel electricity. 

In Paul's time he told the Christians to greet 
each other with a holy kiss. We are glad the cus- 



240 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

torn has been dropped, for there are many good 
people who would not want to kiss us, as we would 
not want to kiss them. Very attractive persons 
would find the supply greater than the demand. 
But let us have a substitute suited to our a^e and 
land. Let it be good, hearty, enthusiastic, Christ- 
ian hand-shaking. 

Governor Wiseman, our grave friend at tea, 
broke in upon us at this moment and said: I am 
not fond of indiscriminate hand-shaking, and so 
am not especially troubled by the lack of cordiality 
on the part of church-goers. But I am sometimes 
verv much annoved on Sabbaths with the habit of 
some good people in church. It may be foolish in 
me ; but when the wind blows from the east, it takes 
but little to disturb me. 

There are some of the best Christian people who 
do not know how to carry themselves in religious 
assemblage. They never laugh. They never ap- 
plaud. They never hiss. Yet, notwithstanding, 
are disturbers of public worship. 

There is. for instance, the couo-hinof brigade. If 
anv individual right ouorht to be maintained at all 
hazards, it is the right of coucrhino-. There are 
times when you must cough. There is an irresist- 
ible tickling in the throat which demands audible 
demonstration. It is moved, seconded and unani- 
mously carried that those who have irritated wind- 



BEHAVIOR AT CHURCH. 24 1 

pipes be heard. But there are ways with hand or 
handkerchief of breaking the repercussion. A 
smothered cough is dignified and acceptable if you 
have nothing better to offer. But how many audi- 
ences have had their peace sacrificed by unre- 
strained expulsion of air through the glottis! 
After a sudden change in the weather, there is a 
fearful charge made by the coughing brigade. They 
open their mouths wide, and make the arches ring 
with the racket. They begin with a faint " Ahem !" 
and gradually rise and fall through all the scale of 
dissonance, as much as to say : " Hear, all ye good 
people ! I have a cold ! I have a bad cold ! I have 
an awful bad cold ! Hear how it racks me, tears 
me, torments me. It seems as if my diaphragm 
must be split. I took this awful bad cold the other 
night. I added to it last Sunday. Hear how it 
goes off! There it is again. Oh dear me ! If I 
only had ' Brown's Troches,' or the syrup of squills, 
or a mustard plaster, or a woollen stocking turned 
wrong side out around my neck !" Brethren and 
sisters who took cold by sitting in the same draught 
join the clamor, and it is glottis to glottis, and laryn- 
gitis to laryngitis, and a chorus of scrapings and 
explosions which make the service hideous for a 
preacher of sensitive nerves. We have seen peo- 
ple under the pulpit coughing with their mouth so 
far open we have been tempted to jump into it. 



242 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

There are some persons who have a convenient ec- 
clesiastical cough. It does not trouble them ordi- 
narilv ; but when in church vou oret them thorough! v 
cornered with some practical truth, they smother 
the end of the sentences with a favorite paroxysm. 
There is a man in our church who is apt to betaken 
with one of these fits just as the contribution box 
comes to him, and cannot seem to get his breath 
again till he hears the pennies rattling in the box 
behind him. Cough by all means, but put on the 
brakes when vou come to the down-grade, or send 
the racket through at least one fold of your pocket- 
handkerchief. 

Governor Wiseman went on further to sav that 
the habits of the pulpit sometimes annoyed him as 
much as the habits of the pew. The governor 
said : I cannot bear the " preliminaries " of relig- 
ious service. 

Bv common consent the exercises in the churches 
going before the sermon are called " preliminaries." 
The dictionary says that a " preliminary " is that 
which precedes the main business. We do not 
think the sermon ought to be considered the main 
business. When a pastor at the beginning of the 
first prayer says i( God/" he has entered upon 
the most important duty of the service. We 
would not depreciate the sermon, but we plead for 
more attention to the "preliminaries." If a minis- 



BEHAVIOR AT CHURCH. 243 

ter cannot get the attention of the people for 
prayer or Bible-reading, it is his own fault. Much 
of the interest of a service depends upon how it 
is launched. 

" The preliminaries " are, for the most part, the 
time in which people in church examine their neigh- 
bors' clothes. Milliners and tailors get the advan- 
tage of the first three-quarters of an hour. "The 
preliminaries " are the time to scrutinize the fresco, 
and look round to see who is there, and get your- 
self generally fixed. 

This idea is fostered by some elocutionary pro- 
fessors who would have the minister take the earlier 
exercises of the occasion to get his voice in tune. 
You must not speak out at first. It is to be a pri- 
vate interview between you and heaven. The peo- 
ple will listen to the low grumble, and think it must 
be very good if they could only hear it. As for 
ourselves, we refuse to put down our head in pub- 
lic prayer until we find out whether or not we are 
going to be able to hear. Though you preach like 
an angel, you will not say anything more important 
than that letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, or 
that Psalm of David which you have just now read 
to the backs of the heads of the congregation. Lay- 
men and ministers, speak out ! The opening exer- 
cises were not instituted to clear your voice, but to 

save souls. If need be, squeeze a lemon and eat 
20 



244 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

" Brown's Troches " for the sake of your voice be- 
fore you go to church ; but once there, make your 
first sentence resonant and mighty for God. An 
hour and a half is short time anyhow to get five 
hundred or five thousand people ready for heaven. 
It is thought classic and elegant to have a delicate 
utterance, and that loud tones are vulgar. But we 
never heard of people being converted by any- 
thing they could not hear. It is said that on the 
Mount of Olives Christ opened his mouth and 
taught them, by which we conclude he spake out 
distinctly. God has given most Christians plenty 
of lungs, but they are too lazy to use them. There 
are in the churches old people hard of hearing who, 
if the exercises be not clear and emphatic, get no 
advantage save that of looking at the blessed min- 
ister. 

People say in apology for their inaudible tones : 
"It is not the thunder that kills, but the lightning." 
True enough ; but I think that God thinks well of 
the thunder or he w r ould not use so much of it. 
First of all, make the people hear the prayer and 
the chapter. If you want to hold up at all, let it be 
on the sermon and the notices. Let the pulpit and 
all the pews feel that there are no " preliminaries." 




CHAPTER XXXIX. 

MASCULINE AND FEMININE. 

THERE are men who suppose they have all the 
annoyances. They say it is the store that 
ruffles the disposition ; but if they could only stay 
at home as do their wives, and sisters, and daugh- 
ters, they would be, all the time, sweet and fair as 
a white pond-lily. Let some of the masculine lec- 
turers on placidity of temper try for one week the 
cares of the household and the family. Let the 
man sleep with a baby on one arm all night, and 
one ear open to the children with the whooping- 
cough in the adjoining apartment. Let him see 
the tray of crockery and the cook fall down stairs, 
and nothing saved but the pieces. Let the pump 
give out on a wash-day, and the stove-pipe, when 
too hot for handling, get dislocated. Let the pud- 
ding come out of the stove stiff as a poker. Let 
the gossiping gabbler of next door come in and 
tell all the disagreeable things that neighbors have 
been saying. Let the lungs be worn out by stay- 
ing indoors without fresh air, and the needle be 
threaded with nerves exhausted. After one week's 

245 



2J.Z 


.-=.-. •_ ..-i: . ^.d 




-• 


* * *" * " 


z. . . , - - . . . _ .... 


- vw "3 ...-. - . c-i 


street is hea 


yen 


and :he ciatt- 


rr :■:" :he Stock Ex- 


change rich 


as d 


eetheven's sy 


mr h: nv, 


We think 


Mar 


y :: Bethany 


a little to blame for 


not helping 


Mar 


at a ^'ri n^ — 


ner. if wcmen sym- 


pathize with 

it: tae men 


— -- 




es ::' s::re and heia. 


a.s : 


sympathize with the women in the 


t-.-v--'^ :•-" ' 




-- _: a i 

:.\r: ^ . m 


.amy a hensewife has 


died :: her 


arm 


cyances. A 1 


bar of soap may be- 


come a 


r a e r c 


>as wean on, 


The rear cookhna- 


stcve has s 


: m e : 


•■ — ^- '-^-- — . 


* slow fire on which 


--^ -,v'"*- ~ - - 


bee 


n r z a s t r a , i : 


t :he day when La:i- 


re: and Ri 


zaev 


are a a n a r e a 


bef© r e t n e u niverse 



Lord wiii farmer ;he iz.ra iine of wives, m ::hers, 
daoahters and sisters who have been the martyrs 
ot the Kitchen. 

Acccmnanying mascuiine criticism of woman's 
temper goes tine rcyaiar criticism of woman's 
dress. 

A ccnventian has recentiy been heia in Vine- 
land, attendee by the women who are orrcsed to 
extravagance in dress They propose, not only 
by formal resolution, but by personal example, t? 
teach the world lessons of economy by wearing 
less adornment and dragging fewer yards of silk. 

e wish them all success, although we would have 
more confidence in the movement if so manv of 



MASCULINE AND FEMININE. 247 

the delegates had not worn bloomer dress. Moses 
makes war upon that style of apparel in Deuter-- 
onomy xxii. 5 : " The woman shall not wear that 
which pertaineth unto man." Nevertheless we favor 
every effort to stop the extravagant use of dry- 
goods and millinery. 

We have, however, no sympathy with the implica- 
tion that women are worse than men in this re- 
spect. Men wear all they can without interfering 
with their locomotion, but man is such an awkward 
creature he cannot find any place on his body to 
hang a great many fineries. He could not get 
round in Wall street with eight or ten flounces, and 
a big-handled parasol, and a mountain of back- 
hair. Men wear less than women, not because 
they are more moral, but because they cannot 
stand it. As it is, many of our young men are 

padded to a superlative degree, and have corns 
and bunions on every separate toe from wearing 
shoes too tight. 

Neither have we any sympathy with the implica- 
tion that the present is worse than the past in mat- 
ters of dress. Compare the fashion-plates of the 
seventeenth century with the fashion-plates of the 
nineteenth, and you decide in favor of our day. 
The women of Isaiah's time beat anything now. 
Do we have the kangaroo fashion Isaiah speaks 

of — the daughters who walked with "stretched forth 

20* 



248 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

necks " ? Talk of hoops ! Isaiah speaks of women 
with "round tires like the moon." Do we have 
hot irons for curling our hair? Isaiah speaks of 
" wimples and crisping pins." Do we sometimes 
wear glasses astride our nose, not because we are 
near-sighted, but for beautification ? Isaiah speaks 
of the " glasses, and the earrings, and the nose- 
jewels." The dress of to-day is far more sensible 
than that of a hundred or a thousand years ago. 

But the largest room in the world is room for 
improvement, and we would cheer on those who 
would attempt reformation either in male or fe- 
male attire. Meanwhile, we rejoice that so many 
of the pearls, and emeralds, and amethysts, and 
diamonds of the world are coming into the posses- 
sion of Christian women. Who knows but that the 
spirit of ancient consecration may some day come 
upon them, and it shall again be as it was in the 
time of Moses, that for the prosperity of the house 
of the Lord the women may bring their bracelets, 
and earrings, and tablets, and jewels ?. The precious 
stones of earth will never have their proper place 
till they are set around the Pearl of Great Price. 




CHAPTER XL. 

LITERARY FELONY. 

TT 7E have recently seen many elaborate discus- 
V V sions as to whether plagiarism is virtuous 
or criminal — in other words, whether writers may 
steal. If a minister can find a sermon better than 
any one he can make, why not preach it? If an 
author can find a paragraph for his book better 
than any he can himself manufacture, why not ap- 
propriate it? 

That sounds well. But why not go further and 
ask, if a woman find a set of furs better than she 
has in her wardrobe, why not take them ? If a 
man find that his neighbor has a cow full Alderney, 
while he has in his own yard only a scrawny runt, 
why not drive home the Alderney ? Theft is tak- 
ing anything that does not belong to you, whether 
it be sheep, oxen, hats, coats or literary material. 

Without attempting to point out the line that di- 
vides the lawful appropriation of another's ideas 
from the appropriation of another's phraseology, 
we have only to say that a literary man always 
knows when he is stealing. Whether found out or 

249 



250 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

not, the process is belittling, and a man is through 
it blasted for this world and damaged for the 
next one. The ass in the fable wanted to die 
because he was beaten so much, but after death 
they changed his hide into a drum -head, and thus 
he was beaten more than ever. So the plagiarist 
is so vile a cheat that there is not much chance for 
him, living or dead. A minister who hopes to do 
good with such burglary will no more be a success- 
ful ambassador to men than a foreign minister 
despatched by our government to-day would suc- 
ceed if he presented himself at the court of St. 
James with the credentials that he stole from the 
archives of those illustrious ex-ministers, James 
Buchanan or Benjamin Franklin. 

What every minister needs is a fresh message 
that day from the Lord. We would sell cheap all 
our parchments of licensure to preach. God gives 
his ministers a license every Sabbath and a new mes- 
sage. He sends none of us out so mentally poor 
that we have nothing to furnish but a cold hash 
of other people's sermons. Our haystack is large 
enough for all the sheep that come round it, and there 
is no need of our taking a single forkful from any 
other barrack. By all means use all the books you 
can get at, but devour them, chew them fine and 
digest them, till they become a part of the blood 
and bone of your own nature. There is no harm 



LITERARY FELONY. 25 I 

in delivering an oration or sermon belonging to 
some one else provided you so announce it. Quo- 
tation marks are cheap, and let us not be afraid to 
use them. Do you know why " quotation " marks 
are made up of four commas, two at the head of 
the paragraph adopted and two at the close of it ? 
Those four commas mean that you should stop 
four times before you steal anything. 

If there were no question of morals involved, 
plagiarism is nevertheless most perilous. There 
are a great many constables out for the arrest of 
such defrauders. That stolen paragraph that you 
think will never be recognized has been committed 
to memory by that old lady with green goggles in 
the front pew. That very same brilliant passage 
you have just pronounced was delivered by the 
clergyman who preached in that pulpit the Sabbath 
before : two thieves met in one hen-roost. All 
we know of Doctor Hayward of Queen Elizabeth's 
time is that he purloined from Tacitus. Be dis- 
honest once in this respect, and when you do really 
say something original and good the world will 
cry out, " Yes, very fine ! I always did like Joseph 
Addison I" 

Sermons are successful not according to the 
head involved in them, but according to the heart 
implied, and no one can feel aright while preaching 
a literary dishonesty. Let us be content to wear 



252 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

our own coat, though the nap on it is not quite as 
well looking, to ride on our own horse, though he 
do not gallop as gracefully and will " break up " 
when others are passing. There is a work for us 
all to do, and God gives us just the best tools to 
do it. What folly to be hankering after our neigh- 
bor's chalk-line and gimlet ! 




CHAPTER XLI. 

LITERAR Y ABSTINENCE. 

IT is as much an art not to read as to read. With 
what pains, and thumps, and whacks at school 
we first learned the way to put words together ! 
We did not mind so much being whipped by the 
schoolmaster for not knowing how to read our les- 
son, but to have to go out ourselves and cut the 
hickory switch with which the chastisement was to 
be inflicted seemed to us then, as it does now, a 
great injustice. 

Notwithstanding all our hard work in learning to 
read, we find it quite as hard now to learn how not 
to read. There are innumerable books and news- 
papers from which one had better abstain. There 
are but very few newspapers which it is safe to read 
all through, though we know of one that it is best 
to peruse from beginning to end, but modesty for- 
bids us stating which one that is. In this day 
readers need as never before to carry a sieve. 

It requires some heroism to say you have not 
read such and such a book. Your friend gives you 

253 



254 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

a stare which implies your literary inferiority. Do 
not, in order to answer the question affirmatively, 
wade through indiscriminate slush. 

We have to say that three fourths of the novels 
of the day are a mental depletion to those who 
read them. The man who makes wholesale denun- 
ciation of fiction pitches overboard " Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress " and the Parables of our Lord. But the fact 
is that some of the publishing houses that once were 
cautious about the moral tone of their books have 
become reckless about everything but the number 
of copies sold. It is all the same to them whether 
the package they send out be corn-starch, jujube 
paste or hellebore. They wrap up fifty copies and 
mark them C. O. D. But if the expressman, ac- 
cording to that mark, should collect on delivery all 
the curses that shall come on the head of the 
publishing house which printed them, he would 
break down his wagon and kill his horses with the 
load. Let parents and guardians be especially 
watchful. Have a quarantine at your front door 
for all books and newspapers. Let the health doc- 
tor go abroad and see whether there is any sick- 
ness there before you let it come to wharfage. 

Whether young or old, be cautious about what 
you read in the newspapers. You cannot day after 
day go through three columns of murder trial with- 
out being a worse man than when you began. 



LITERARY ABSTINENCE. 2$$ 

While you are trying to find out whether Stokes 
was lying in wait for Fisk, Satan is lying in wait for 
you. Skip that half page of divorce case. Keep 
out of the mud. The Burdell and Sickles cases, 
through the unclean reading they afforded to mil- 
lions of people long ago, led their thousands into 
abandoned lives and pitched them off the edge of a 
lost eternity. With so much healthful literature of 
all sorts, there is no excuse for bringing your minds 
in contact with evil. If there were a famine, there 
might be some reason for eating garbage, but the 
land is full of bread. When we may, with our fami- 
lies, sit around the clean warm fire-hearth of Chris- 
tian knowledge, why go hunting in the ash-barrels 

for cinders ? 
21 




CHAPTER XLII. 

SHORT OR LONG PASTORATES. 

THE question is being discussed in many jour- 
nals, " How long ought a minister to stay in 
one place ?" Clergymen and laymen and editors 
are wagging tongue and pen on the subject — a 
most practical question and easy to answer. Let 
a minister stay in a place till he gets done — that is, 
when he has nothing more to say or do. 

Some ministers are such ardent students of the 
Bible and of men, they are after a twenty-five years' 
residence in a parish so full of things that ought to 
be said, that their resignation would be a calamity. 
Others get through in three months and ought to 
go ; but it takes an earthquake to get them away. 
They must be moved on by committees, and pelted 
with resolutions, stuck through with the needles of 
the ladies' sewing society, and advised by neigh- 
boring ministers, and hauled up before presby- 
teries and consociations ; and after they have killed 
the church and killed themselves, the pastoral rela- 
tion is dissolved. 

We knew of a man who got a unanimous call. 

256 



SHORT OR LONG PASTORATES. 2$~ 

He wore the finest pair of gaiters that ever went 
into that pulpit ; and when he took up the Psalm- 
book to give out the song, it was the perfection 
of gracefulness. His tongue was dipped in "balm 
of a thousand flowers," and it was like the roll of 
one of Beethoven's symphonies to hear him read 
the hardest Bible names, Jechonias, Zerubbabel and 
Tiglath-pileser. It was worth all the salary paid 
him to see the way he lifted his pocket-handker- 
chief to his eyelids. 

But that brother, without knowing it, got through 
in six weeks. He had sold out his entire stock of 
goods, and ought to have shut up shop. Congrega- 
tions enjoy flowers and well-folded pocket-handker- 
chiefs for occasional desserts, but do not like them 
for a regular meal. The most urbane elder was 
sent to the minister to intimate that the Lord was 
probably calling him to some other field, but the 
elder was baffled by the graciousness of his pastor, 
and unable to discharge his mission, and after he 
had for an hour hemmed and hawed, backed out. 

Next, a woman with very sharp tongue was sent 
to talk to the minister's wife. The war-cloud thick- 
ened, the pickets were driven in, and then a skir- 
mish, and after a while all the batteries were open- 
ed, and each side said that the other side lied, and 
the minister dropped his pocket-handkerchief and 
showed claws as long- as those of Nebuchadnezzar 



L-'l 



an ox. 

t lira ire . : a ~ aas::~a:es vaaer. i: is i~r-ei: e 
to both parties, but we Know ministers yd r a s t 

abey bave been aairay years in c:.t ria:e. :a:aaa 
ab :be vririi ka:^s abey rave beer. rube re ar.erry- 
rire years ::: :aa Treir ;:aureuaa :rs ire :i- 
nerruy ~ai:ura; ubeir rem:vab a: i h.r:T: iaainrae. 
Vzaar/aiie abrse :bur:aes ire like a rrir ~iah 
;:.:::..; rbeumarism very aria: — r:: be:iase abey 
aaaaire rbe-rrarisnr b_: beeiuse abere is r: use 
ki:kbra- vine a s~:ber :::: sine i: T.seii bum 
abem. ~::t : air :.e :: -:: issauuei 

If a pastorate can be maintained only through 
conflict or ecclesiastical tyranny, it might better be 
abandoned. There are many ministers who go 
a ".'ay fro rr abeir seriierrerrs be:: re abey rear: ':_: 
v.-- :birk abere a~r :ui:e as rrary vb: f: a:: a 
a:: :::.;:. A bus: ar : a;:.: ; as: as -.eb :ry : : 
keec bis " be : y :r:a:aa aer :: rear: •- ;:a i rrar- 
:.a: r ru 2.= ~=- minister :: try ::• keet a :b. r:b's 
love by e::ies.astical violence. Study are aes: 
time to quit. 

C^~_ bT "TT bbbb>0 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

AN EDITOR'S CHIP- BASKET. 

ON our way out the newspaper rooms we stum- 
bled over the basket in which is deposited 
the literary material we cannot use. The basket 
upset and surprised us with its contents. On the 
top were some things that looked like fifteen or 
twenty poems. People outside have no idea of 
the amount of rhyme that comes to a printing- 
office. The fact is that at some period in every 
one's life he writes "poetry." His existence de- 
pends upon it. We wrote ten or fifteen verses our- 
selves once. Had we not written them just then 
and there, we might not be here. They were in 
long metre, and " Old Hundred " would have fitted 
them grandly. 

Many people are seized with the poetic spasm 
when they are sick, and their lines are apt to be- 
gin with 

" O mortality ! how frail art thou I" 

Others on Sabbath afternoons write Sabbath-school 
hymns, adding to the batch of infinite nonsense 
that the children are compelled to swallow. For 

21* 259 



26o AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

others a beautiful curl is a corkscrew pulling out 
canto after canto. Nine tenths of the rhyme that 
comes to a printing-office cannot be used. You 
hear a rough tear of paper, and you look around 
to see the managing editor adding to the responsi- 
bilities of his chip-basket. What a way that is to 
treat incipient Tennysons and Longfellows ! 

Next to the poetic effusions tumble out treatises 
on " constitutional law " heavy enough to break the 
basket. We have noticed that after a man has got 
so dull he can gfet no one willing to hear him he 
takes to profound exposition. Out from the same 
chip-basket rolls a great pile of announcements 
that people want put among the editorials, so as to 
save the expense of the advertising column. They 
tell us the article they wish recommended will have 
a highly beneficial effect upon the Church and world. 
It is a religious churn, or a moral horse-rake, or a 
consecrated fly-trap. They almost get us crying 
over their new kind of grindstone, and we put the 
letter down on the table while we get out our 
pocket-handkerchief, when our assistant takes hold 
the document and gives it a ruthless rip, and pitches 
it into the chip-basket. 

Next in the pile of torn and upset things is the 
speech of some one on the momentous occasion of 
the presentation of a gold-headed cane, or silver 
pitcher, or brass kettle for making preserves. It 



AN ED II OR ' S CHIP-BA SKE T. 26 1 

was " unexpected," a " surprise" and " undeserved," 
and would " long be cherished." " Great applause, 
and not a dry eye in the house," etc., etc. But 
there is not much room in a paper for speeches. 
In this country everybody speaks. An American 
is in his normal condition when he is making a 
speech. He is born with " fellow-citizens " in his 
mouth, and closes his earthly life by saying, " One 
word more, and I have done." Speeches being so 
common, newspaper readers do not want a large 
supply, and so many of these utterances, intended 
to be immortal, drop into oblivion through that in- 
exhaustible reservoir, the editorial chip-basket. 

But there is a hovering of pathos over this wreck 
of matter. Some of these wasted things were 
written for bread by intelligent wives with drunken 
husbands trying to support their families with the 
pen. Over that mutilated manuscript some weary 
man toiled until daybreak. How we wish we 
could have printed what they wrote ! Alas for 
the necessity that disappoints the literary struggle 
of so many women and men, when it is ten dollars 
for that article or children gone supperless to bed ! 

Let no one enter the field of literature for the 
purpose of " making a living " unless as a very 
last resort. There are thousands of persons to- 
day starving to death with a steel pen in their hand. 
The story of Grub street and poets living on thin 



262 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

soup is being repeated all over this land, although 
the modern cases are not so conspicuous. Poverty 
is no more agreeable because classical and set in 
hexameters. The hungry author cannot breakfast 
on " odes to summer." On this cold day how many 
of the literati are shivering ! Martyrs have per- 
ished in the fire, but more persons have perished 
for lack of fire. Let no editor through hypercriti- 
cism of contributed articles add to this educated 
suffering. 

What is that we hear in the next room ? It is 
the roar of a big fire as it consumes unavailable 
literary material — epics, sonnets, homilies, tractates, 
compilations, circulars, dissertations. Some of 
them were obscure, and make a great deal of smoke. 
Some of them were merry, and crackle. All of 
them have ended their mission and gone down, 
ashes to ashes and dust to dust. 




CHAPTER XLIV. 

THE MANHOOD OF SERVICE. 

AT the Crawford House, White Mountains, we 
noticed, this summer, unusual intelligence 
and courtesy on the part of those who served the 
tables. We found out that many of them were 
students from the colleges and seminaries — young 
men and women who had taken this mode of re- 
plenishing their purses and getting the benefit of 
mountain air. We felt like applauding them. We 
have admiration for those who can be independ- 
ent of the oppressive conventionalities of society. 
May not all of us practically adopt the Christian 
theory that any work is honorable that is useful ? 
The slaves of an ignominious pride, how many 
kill themselves earning a living ! We have tens of 
thousands of women in our cities, sitting in cold 
rooms, stabbing their life out with their needle, 
coughing their lungs into tubercles, and suffering 
the horrors of the social inquisition, for whom 
there waits plenty of healthy, happy homes in the 
country, if they could only, like these sons and 
daughters of Dartmouth and Northampton, con- 

263 



264 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

sent to serve. We wish some one would explain 
to us how a sewing-machine is any more respect- 
able than a churn, or a yard-stick is better than a 
pitchfork. We want a new Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, signed by all the laboring classes. There 
is plenty of work for all kinds of people, if they 
were not too proud to do it. Though the country 
is covered with people who can rind nothing to do, 
we would be willing to open a bureau to-morrow, 
warranting to give to all the unemployed of the 
land occupation, if they would only consent to do 
what might be assigned them. We believe any- 
thing is more honorable than idleness. 

Durino- verv hard times two Italian artists called 
at our countrv home, asking if we did not want 
some sketching done, and thev unrolled some ele- 
gant pictures, showing their line capacity. We 
told them we had no desire for sketches, but we 
had a cistern to clean, and would pay them well 
for doing it. Off went their coats, and in a few 
hours the work was done and their wa^es awarded. 
How much more honorable for them to do what 
thev could o;et to do rather than to wait for more 
adapted employment ! 

Why did not the girls of Northampton spend 
their summers embroidering slippers or hemming 
handkerchiefs, and thus keep at work unobserved 
and more popular? Because they were not fools. 



THE MANHOOD OF SERVICE. 265 

They said: "Let us go up and see Mount Adams, 
and the Profile, and Mount Washington. We shall 
have to work only five hours a day, and all the 
time we will be gathering health and inspiration. " 
Young men, those are the girls to seek when you 
want a wife, rather than the wheezing victims of 
ruinous work chosen because it is more popular. 
About the last thing we would want to marry is a 
medicine-chest. Why did not the students of 
Dartmouth, during their vacation, teach school ? 
First, because teaching is a science, and they did 
not want to do three months of damage to the 
children of the common school. Secondly, be- 
cause they wanted freedom from books as man 
makes them, and opportunity to open the ponder- 
ous tome of boulder and strata as God printed 
them. Churches and scientific institutions, these 
will be the men to call — brawny and independent, 
rather than the bilious, short-breathed, nerveless 
graduates who, too proud to take healthful recrea- 
tion, tumble, at commencement day, into the lap of 
society so many Greek roots. 




CHAPTER XLV. 

BALKY PEOPLE. 

PASSING along a country road quite recently, 
we found a man, a horse and wagon in trou- 
ble. The vehicle was slight and the road was good, 
but the horse refused to draw, and his driver was 
in a bad predicament. He had already destroyed 
his whip in applying inducements to progress in 
travel. He had pulled the horse's ears with a sharp 
strinof. He had backed him into the ditch. He 
had built a fire of straw underneath him, the only 
result a smashed dash-board. The chief effect of 
the violences and cruelties applied was to increase 
the divergency of feeling between the brute and 
his master. We said to the besweated and out- 
raged actor in the scene that the best thing for 
him to do was to let his horse stand for a while un- 
whipped and uncoaxed, setting some one to watch 
him while he, the driver, went away to cool off. 
We learned that the plan worked admirably ; that 
the cold air, and the appetite for oats, and the soli- 
tude of the road, favorable for contemplation, had 

266 



BALKY PEOPLE. 269 

made the horse move for adjournment to some 
other place and time ; and when the driver came 
up, he had but to take up the reins, and the beast, 
erst so obstinate, dashed down the road at a peril- 
ous speed. 

There is not as much difference between horses 
and men as you might suppose. The road be- 
tween mind and equine instinct is short and soon 
travelled. The horse is sometimes superior to his 
rider. If anything is good and admirable in pro- 
portion as it answers the end of its being, then the 
horse that bends into its traces before a Fourth 
avenue car is better than its blaspheming driver. 
He who cannot manage a horse cannot manage a 
man. 

We know of pastors who have balky parishioners. 
When any important move is to take place, and all 
the other horses of the team are willing to draw, 
they lay themselves back in the harness. 

First the pastor pats the obstreperous elder or 
deacon on the neck and tells him how much he 
thinks of him. This only makes him shake his 
mane and grind his bit. He will die first before 
he consents to such a movement. Next, he is 
pulled by the ear, with a good many sharp insinua- 
tions as to his motives for holding back. Fires of 
indignation are built under him for the purpose of 

consuming his balkiness. He is whipped with the 
22 



270 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

scourge of public opinion, but this only makes him 
kick fiercely and lay harder in the breeching-straps. 
He is backed down into the ditch of scorn and con- 
tempt, but still is not willing to draw an ounce. O 
foolish minister, trying in that way to manage a 
balky parishioner ! Let him alo?ie. Go on and 
leave him there. Pay less attention to the horse 
that balks, and give more oats to those that pull. 
Leave him out in the cold. Some day you will 
come back and find him glad to start. At your 
first advance he will arch his neck, paw his hoof, 
bend into the bit, stiffen the traces and dash on. 
We have the same prescription for balky horses 
and men : for a little while let them alone. 




CHAPTER XLVI. 

ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 

IN boyhood days we were impressed with the fer- 
tility of a certain author whose name so often 
appeared in the spelling-books and readers, styled 
Anon. He seemed to write more than Isaac Watts, 
or Shakespeare, or Blair. In the index, and scat- 
tered throughout all our books, was the name of 
Anon. He appeared in all styles of poetry and 
prose and dialogue. We wondered where he lived, 
what his age was, and how he looked. It was not 
until quite late in boyhood that we learned that 
Anon was an abbreviation for anonymous, and that 
he was sometimes the best saint and at other times 
the most extraordinary villain. 

After centuries of correspondence old Anony- 
mous is as fertile of thought and brain and strat- 
agem as ever, and will probably keep on writing 
till the last fire burns up his pen and cracks to 
pieces his ink-bottle. Anonymous letters some- 
times have a mission of kindness and gratitude and 
good cheer. Genuine modesty may sometimes 
hide the name of an epistolary author or author- 

271 



272 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

ess. It may be a " God bless you " from some one 
who thinks herself hardly in a position to address 
you. It may be the discover}" of a plot for your 
damage, in which the revelator does not care to 
take the responsibility of a witness. It may be any 
one of a thousand things that mean frankness and 
delicacy and honor and Christian principle. We 
have received anonymous letters which we have 
put away among our most sacred archives. 

But we suppose every one chiefly associates the 
idea of anonymous communications with every- 
thing cowardly and base. There are in all nei°fh- 
borhoods perfidious, sneaking, dastardly, filthy, ca- 
lumnious, vermin-infested wretches, spewed up from 
perdition, whose joy it is to write letters with ficti- 
tious signatures. Sometimes they take the shape 
of a valentine, the fourteenth of February beino- a 
great outlet for this obscene spawn. If your nose 
be long, or your limbs slender, or your waist thick 
around, they will be pictorially presented. Some- 
times they take the form of a delicate threat that 
if you do not thus or so there will be a funeral 
at your house, yourself the chief object of inter- 
est. Sometimes they will be denunciator}' of your 
friends. Once being called to preside at a meet- 
ing for the relief of the sewing-women of Phila- 
delphia, and having been called in the opening 
speech to say something about oppressive con- 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 2 J $ 

tractors, we received some twenty anonymous let- 
ters, the purport of which was that it would be un- 
safe for us to go out of doors after dark. Three 
months after moving to Brooklyn we preached a 
sermon reviewing one of the sins of the city, and 
anonymous letters came saying that we would not 
last six months in the city of churches. 

Sometimes the anonymous crime takes the form 
of a newspaper article ; and if the matter be pur- 
sued, the editor-in-chief puts it off on the managing 
editor, and the managing editor upon the book 
critic, and the book critic upon the reporter. 
Whether Adam or Eve or the serpent was the 
most to be blamed for the disappearance of the 
fair apple of reputation is uncertain ; the only 
thing you can be sure of is that the apple is 
gone. No honest man will ever write a thing for 
a newspaper, in editorial or any other column, that 
he would be ashamed to sign with the Christian 
name that his mother had him baptized with. They 
who go skulking about under the editorial " we," 
unwilling to acknowledge their identity, are more 
fit for Delaware whipping-posts than the position 
of public educators. It is high time that such 
hounds were muzzled. 

Let every young man know that when he is 
tempted to pen anything which requires him to 
disguise his handwriting he is in fearful danger. 

■22* 



2/4 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

You despoil your own nature by such procedure 
more than you can damage any one else. Bowie- 
knife and dagger are more honorable than an 
anonymous pen sharpened for defamation of cha- 
racter. Better try putting strychnine in the flour- 
barrel. Better mix ratsbane in the jelly- cake. That 
behavior would be more elegant and Christian. 

After much observation we have fixed upon this 
plan : If any one writes us in defamation of another, 
we adopt the opposite theory. If the letter says 
that the assaulted one lies, we take it as eulogistic 
of his veracity ; or that he is unchaste, we set him 
down as pure ; or fraudulent, we are seized with a 
desire to make him our executor. We do so on 
logical and unmistakable grounds. A defamatory 
letter is from the devil or his satellites. The devil 
hates only the good. The devil hates Mr. A ; ergo, 
Mr. A is good. 

Much of the work of the day of judgment will 
be with the authors of anonymous letters. The 
majority of other crimes against society were found 
out, but these creatures so disguised their hand- 
writing in the main text of the letter, or so willfully 
misspelled the direction on the envelope, and put it 
in such a distant post-office, and looked so inno- 
cent when you met them that it shall be for the 
most part a dead secret till the books are opened ; 
and when that is done, we do not think these aban- 



ANONYMOUS LETTERS. 2J$ 

doned souls will wait to have their condemnation 
read, but, ashamed to meet the announcement, will 
leap pell-mell into the pit, crying, "We wrote 
them." 

If, since the world stood, there have been com- 
posed and sent off by mail or private postmen 
1,600,378 anonymous letters derogatory of cha- 
racter, then 1,600,378 were vicious and damnable. 
If you are compelled to choose between writing a 
letter with false signature vitriolic of any man's in- 
tegrity or any woman's honor on the one hand, and 
the writing a letter with a red-hot nail dipped in ad- 
der's poison on a sheet woven of lepers' scales, 
choose the latter. It were healthier, nobler, and 
could better endure the test of man's review and 
God's scrutiny. 




CHAPTER XLVII. 

BRAWN OR BRAIN. 

GOVERNOR WISEMAN (our oracular friend 
who talked in the style of an oration) was 
with us this evening at the tea-table, and we were 
mentioning the fact that about thirty colleges last 
summer in the United States contested for the 
championship in boat-racing. About two hundred 
thousand young ladies could not sleep nights, so 
anxious were thev to know whether Yale or YVil- 
Hams would be the winner. The newspapers gave 
three and four columns to the particulars. The 
telegraph wires thrilled the victory to all parts of 
the land. Some of the religious papers condemn- 
ed the whole affair, enlarging upon the strained 
wrists, broken blood-vessels and barbaric animal- 
ism of men who ought to have been rowing their 
race with the Binomial Theorem for one oar and 
Karnes' Elements of Criticism for the other. 

For the most part, we sympathized with the boys, 
and confess that at our hotel we kept careful watch 
of the bulletin to see whose boat came in ahead. 
We are disposed to applaud anything that will 

278 



BRAWX OR BRAIN. 2yj 

give our young men muscular development. Stu- 
dents have such a tendency to lounge, and mope, 
and chew, and eat almond-nuts at midnight, and 
read novels after they go to bed, the candlestick 
set up on Webster's dictionary or the Bible, that 
we prize anything that makes them cautious about 
their health, as they must be if they would enter 
the list of contestants. How many of our country 
boys enter the Freshman class of college in robust 
health, which lasts them about a twelvemonth ; 
then in the Sophomore they lose their liver ; in 
the Junior they lose their stomach ; in the Senior 
they lose their back-bone ; graduating skeletons, 
more fit for an anatomical museum than the bar 
or pulpit. 

" Midnight oil," so much eulogized, is the poor- 
est kind of kerosene. Where hard study kills one 
student, bad habits kill a hundred. Kirk White, 
while at Cambridge, wrote beautiful hymns ; but if 
he had gone to bed at ten o'clock that night instead 
of three o'clock the next morning, he would have 
been of more service to the world and a healthier 
example to all collegians. Much of the learning 
of the day is morbid, and much of the religion 
bilious. We want, first of all, a clean heart, and 
next a strong stomach. Falling from grace is often 
chargeable to derangement of gastric juices. Oar 
and bat may become salutary weapons. 



2?S AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

But, after all, there was something wrong about 
those summer boat-races. A student with a stout 
arm, and great girth, and full chest, and nothing 
else, is not at all admirable. Mind and body need 
to be driven tandem, the body for the wheel-horse 
and the intellect the leader. We want what is now 
proposed in some directions — a grand collegiate 
literary race. Let the mental contest be on the 
same week with the muscular. Let Yale and Har- 
vard and Williams and Princeton and Dartmouth 
see who has the champion among scholars. Let 
there be a Waterloo in belles-lettres and rhetoric 
and mathematics and philosophy. Let us see 
whether the students of Doctors McCosh, or Por- 
ter, or Campbell, or Smith are most worthy to 
wear the belt. About twelve o'clock at noon let 
the literary flotilla start prow and prow, oar-lock and 
oar-lock. Let Helicon empty its waters to swell 
the river of knowledge on which they row. Right 
foot on right rib of the boat, and left foot on the 
left rib — bend into it my hearties, bend! — and our 
craft come out four lengths ahead. 

Give the brain a chance as well as the arm. Do 
' not let the animal eat up the soul. Let the body 
be the well-fashioned hulk, and the mind the white 
sails, all hoisted, everything, from flying jib to 
spanker, bearing on toward the harbor of glorious 
achievement. When that boat starts, we want to 



BRAWN OR BRAIN. 279 

be on the bank to cheer, and after sundown help 
fill the air with sky-rockets. 

" By the way," I said, " Governor Wiseman, do 
you not think that we all need more out-door ex- 
ercise and that contact with the natural world 
would have a cheering tendency ? Governor, do 
you ever have the blues ?" 

The governor, putting his knife across the plate 
and throwing his spectacles up on his forehead, 
replied : 

Almost every nature, however sprightly, some- 
times will drop into a minor key, or a subdued 
mood that in common parlance is recognized as 
" the blues." There may be no adverse causes at 
work, but somehow the bells of the soul stop 
ringing, and you feel like sitting quiet, and you 
strike off fifty per cent, from all your worldly and 
spiritual prospects. The immediate cause may be 
a north-east wind, or a balky liver, or an enlarged 
spleen, or pickled oysters at twelve o'clock the 
nicrht before. 

In such depressed state no one can afford to sit 
for an hour. First of all let him get up and go 
out of doors. Fresh air, and the faces of cheerful 
men, and pleasant women, and frolicsome children, 
will in fifteen minutes kill moping. The first mo- 
ment your friend strikes the key-board of your 
soul it will ring music. A hen might as well try on 



280 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

populous Broadway to hatch out a feathery group 
as for a man to successfully brood over his ills in 
lively society. Do not go for relief among those 
who feel as badly as you do. Let not toothache, 
and rheumatism, and hypochondria go to see tooth- 
ache, rheumatism and hypochondria. On one 
block in Brooklyn live a doctor, an undertaker 
and a clergyman. That is not the row for a nervous 
man to walk on, lest he soon need all three. Throw 
back all the shutters of your soul and let the sun- 
light of genial faces shine in. 

Besides that, why sit ye here with the blues, ye 
favored sons and daughters of men ? Shone upon by 
such stars, and breathed on by such air, and sung 
to by so many pleasant sounds, you ought not to 
be seen moping. Especially if light from the bet- 
ter world strikes its aurora through your night-sky, 
ought you be cheerful. You can afford to have a 
rough luncheon by the way if it is soon to end 
amid the banqueters in white. Sailing toward such 
a blessed port, do not have our flag at half mast. 
Leave to those who take too much wine " the gloomy 
raven tapping at the chamber door, on the night's 
Plutonian shore," and give us the robin red-breast 
and the chaffinch. Let some one with a strong 
voice give out the long-metre doxology, and the 
whole world " Praise God, from whom all blessings 
flow." 



BRA WN OR BRAIN. 28 1 

"But do you not suppose, Governor Wiseman, 
that every man has his irritated days ?" 

Yes, yes, responded the governor. There are 
times when everything seems to go wrong. From 
seven o'clock a. m. till ten p. m. affairs are in a twist. 
You rise in the morning, and the room is cold and 
a button is off and the breakfast is tough and the 
stove smokes and the pipes burst, and you start 
down the street nettled from head to foot. All day 
long things are adverse. Insinuations, petty losses, 
meanness on the part of customers. The ink- 
bottle upsets and spoils the carpet. Some one 
gives a wrong turn to the damper, and the gas es- 
capes. An agent comes in determined to insure 
your life, when it is already insured for more than 
it is worth, and you are afraid some one will knock 
you on the head to get the price of your policy ; 
but he sticks to you, showing you pictures of old 
Time and the hour-glass, and Death's scythe and a 
skeleton, making it quite certain that you will die 
before your time unless you take out papers in 
his company. Besides this, you have a cold in 
your head, and a grain of dirt in your eye, and you 
are a walking uneasiness. The day is out of joint, 
and no surgeon can set it. 

The probability is that if you would look at the 
weather-vane you would find that the wind is north- 
east, and you might remember that you have lost 

23 



282 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

much sleep lately. It might happen to be that you 
are out of joint instead of the day. Be careful and 
not write many letters while you are in that irri- 
tated mood. You will pen some things that you 
will be sorry for afterward. 

Let us remember that these spiked nettles of life 
are part of our discipline. Life would get nauseat- 
ing if it wete all honey. That table would be 
poorly set that had on it nothing but treacle. We 
need a little vinegar, mustard, pepper and horse- 
radish that brings the tears even when we do not 
feel pathetic. If this world were all smoothness, 
we would never be ready for emigration to a higher 
and better. Blustering March and weeping April 
prepare us for shining May. This world is a poor 
hitching-post. Instead of tying fast on the cold 
mountains, we had better whip up and hasten on 
toward the warm inn where our good friends are 
looking out of the window, watching to see us 
come up. 

Interrupting the governor at this point, we asked 
him if he did not think that rowing, ball-playing 
and other athletic exercises might be made an an- 
tidote to the morbid religion that' is sometimes 
manifest. The governor replied : 

No doubt much of the Christian character of the 
day lacks in swarthiness and power. It is gentle 
enough, and active enough, and well-meaning 



BRAWN OR BRAIN. 283 

enough, but is wantinor in moral muscle. It can 
sweetly sing at a prayer-meeting, and smile gra- 
ciously when it is the right time to smile, and makes 
an excellent nurse to pour out with steady hand a 
few drops of peppermint for a child that feels dis- 
turbances under the waistband, but has no qualifi- 
cation for the robust Christian work that is de- 
manded. 

One reason for this is the ineffable softness of 
much of what is called Christian literature. The 
attempt is to bring us up on tracts made up of thin 
exhortations and goodish maxims. A nerveless 
treatise on commerce or science in that style would 
be crumpled up by the first merchant and thrown 
into his waste-basket. Religious twaddle is of no 
more use than worldly twaddle. If a man has noth- 
ing to say, he had better keep his pen wiped and 
his tongue still. There needs an infusion of strong 
Anglo-Saxon into religious literature, and a brawn- 
ier manliness and more impatience with insipidity, 
though it be prayerful and sanctimonious. He who 
stands with irksome repetitions asking people to 
" Come to Jesus," while he gives no strong com- 
mon-sense reason why they should come, drives 
back the souls of men. If, with all the thrilling 
realities of eternity at hand, a man has nothing 
to write which can gather up and master the 
thoughts and feelings of men, his writing and 



284 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

speaking are a slander on the religion which he 
wishes to eulogize. 

Morbidity in religion might be partially cured by 
more out-door exercise. There are some duties 
we can perform better on our feet than on our 
knees. If we carry the grace of God with us down 
into every-day practical Christian work, we will get 
more spiritual strength in five minutes than by ten 
hours of kneeling. If Daniel had not served God 
save when three times a day he worshiped toward 
the temple, the lions would have surely eaten him 
up. The school of Christ is as much out-of-doors 
as in-doors. Hard, rough work for God will de- 
velop an athletic soul. Religion will not conquer 
either the admiration or the affections of men by 
effeminacy, but by strength. Because the heart is 
soft is no reason why the head should be soft. The 
spirit of genuine religion is a spirit of great power. 
When Christ rides in apocalyptic vision, it is not 
on a weak and stupid beast, but on a horse — em- 
blem of majesty and strength: "And he went 
forth conquering and to conquer." 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

WARM-WEATHER RELIGION. 

IT takes more grace to be an earnest and useful 
Christian in summer than in any other season. 
The very destitute, through lack of fuel and thick 
clothing, may find the winter the trying season, 
but those comfortably circumstanced find summer 
the Thermopylae that tests their Christian courage 
and endurance. 

The spring is suggestive of God and heaven and 
a resurrection day. That eye must be blind that 
does not see God's footstep in the new grass, and 
hear his voice in the call of the swallow at the 
eaves. In the white blossoms of the orchards we 
find suggestion of those whose robes have been 
made white in the blood of the Lamb. A May 
morning is a door opening into heaven. 

So autumn mothers a great many moral and re- 
ligious suggestions. The season of corn-husking, 
the gorgeous woods that are becoming the cata- 
falque of the dead year, remind the dullest of his 
own fading and departure. 

But summer fatigues and weakens, and no man 

23* 285 



286 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

keeps his soul in as desirable a frame unless by posi- 
tive resolution and especial implorations. Pulpit 
and pew often get stupid together, and ardent de- 
votion is adjourned until September. 

But who can afford to lose two months out of 
each year, when the years are so short and so few ? 
He who stops religious growth in July and Au- 
gust will require the next six months to get over 
it. Nay, he never recovers. At the season when 
the fields are most full of leafage and life let us 
not be lethargic and stupid. 

Let us remember that iniquity does not cease in 
summer-time. She never takes a vacation. The 
devil never leaves town. The child of want, living 
up that dark alley, has not so much fresh air nor 
sees as many flowers as in winter-time. In cold 
weather the frost blossoms on her window-pane, 
and the snow falls in wreaths in the alley. God 
pity the wretchedness that pants and sweats and 
festers and dies on the hot pavements and in the 
suffocating cellars of the town ! 

Let us remember that our exit from this world 
will more probably be in the summer than in any 
other season, and we cannot afford to die at a time 
when we are least alert and worshipful. At mid- 
summer the average of departures is larger than 
in cool weather. The sun-strokes, the dysenteries, 
the fevers, the choleras, have affinity for July and 



WARM- WEATHER RELIGION. 287 

August. On the edge of summer Death stands 
whetting his scythe for a great harvest. We are 
most careful to have our doors locked, and our 
windows fastened, and our " burglar alarm " set at 
times when thieves are most busy, and at a season 
of the year when diseases are most active in their 
burglaries of life we need to be ready. 

Our charge, therefore, is, make no adjournment 
of your religion till cool weather. Whether you 
stay in town, or seek the farm-house, or the sea- 
shore, or the mountains, be faithful in prayer, in 
Bible reading and in attendance upon Christian 
ordinances. He who throws away two months of 
life wastes that for which many a dying sinner 
would have been willing to give all his possessions 
when he found that the harvest was past and the 
summer was ended. 

The thermometer to-day has stood at a high 
mark. The heat has been fierce. As far as pos- 
sible, people have kept within-doors or walked on 
the shady side of the street. But we can have but 
a faint idea of what the people suffer crossing a 
desert or in a tropical clime. The head faints, the 
tongue swells and deathly sickness comes upon 
the whole body when long exposed to the summer 
sun. I see a whole caravan pressing on through 
the hot sands. " Oh," say the camel-drivers, " for 
water and shade I" At last they see an elevation 



288 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

against the sky. They revive at the sight and push 
on. That which they saw proves to be a great 
rock, and camels and drivers throw themselves 
down under the long shadow. Isaiah, who lived 
and wrote in a scorching climate, draws his figure 
from what he had seen and felt when he represents 
God as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 

Many people have found this world a desert- 
march. They go half consumed of trouble all 
their days. But, glory be to God ! we are not 
turned out on a desert to die. Here is the long, 
cool, certain, refreshing shadow of the Lord. 

A tree, when in full leafage, drops a great deal 
of refreshment; but in a little while the sun strikes 
through, and you keep shifting your position, until, 
after a while, the sun is set at such a point that 
you have no shade at all. But go in the heart of 
some great rock, such as you see in Yosemite or 
the Alps, and there is everlasting shadow. There 
has been thick shade there for six thousand years, 
and will be for the next six thousand. So our 
divine Rock, once covering us, always covers us. 
The same yesterday, to-day and for ever ! always 
good, always kind, always sympathetic ! You often 
hold a sunshade over your head passing along the 
road or a street; but after a while your arm gets 
tired, and the very effort to create the shadow 
makes you weary. But the rock in the mountains, 



WARM -WEATHER RELIGION. 289 

with fingers of everlasting stone, holds its own 
shadow. So God's sympathy needs no holding 
up from us. Though we are too weak from sick- 
ness or trouble to do anything but lie down, over 
us he stretches the shadow of his benediction. 

It is our misfortune that we mistake God's shadow 
for the night. If a man come and stand between 
you and the sun, his shadow falls upon you. So 
God sometimes comes and stands between us and 
worldly successes, and his shadow falls upon us, 
and we wrongly think that it is night. As a father 
in a garden stoops down to kiss his child the 
shadow of his body falls upon it ; and so many of 
the dark misfortunes of our life are not God going 
away from us, but our heavenly Father stooping 
down to give us the kiss of his infinite and everlast- 
ing love. It is the shadow of a sheltering Rock, 
and not of a devouring lion. 

Instead of standing right out in the blistering 
noon-day sun of earthly trial and trouble, come un- 
der the Rock. You may drive into it the longest 
caravan of disasters. Room for the suffering, 
heated, sunstruck, dying, of all generations, in the 
shadow of the great Rock : 

u Rock of ages, deft for me, 
Let me hide myself in thee.^ 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

HIDING EGGS FOR EASTER. 

THOSE who were so unfortunate as to have 
been born and brought up in the city know 
nothing about that chapter in a boy's history of 
which I speak. 

About a month before Easter there comes to the 
farmhouse a scarcity of eggs. The farmer's wife 
begins to abuse the weasels and the cats as the 
probable cause of the paucity. The feline tribe 
are assaulted with many a harsh "Scat!" on the 
suspicion of their fondness for omelets in the raw. 
Custards fail from the table. The Dominick hens 
are denounced as not worth their mush. Mean- 
while, the boys stand round the corner in a broad 
grin at what is the discomforture of the rest of the 
family. 

The truth must be told that the boys, in antici- 
pation of Easter, have, in some hole in the mow 
or some barrel in the wagon-house, been hiding 
eggs. If the youngsters understand their business, 
they will compromise the matter, and see that at 
least a small supply goes to the house every day. 

290 



HIDING EGGS FOR EASTER. 29 1 

Too great greed on the part of the boy will discover 
the whole plot, and the charge will be made : " De 
Witt, I believe you are hiding the eggs !" Forth- 
with the boy is collared and compelled to disgorge 
his possessions. 

Now, there is nothing more trying to a boy than, 
after great care in accumulating these shelly re- 
sources, to have to place them in a basket and bring 
them forth to the light two weeks before Easter. 
Boys, therefore, manage with skill and dexterity. 
At this season of the year you see them lurking 
much about the barrack and the hay-loft. You see 
them crawling out from stacks of straw and walk- 
ing away rapidly with their hands behind them. 
They look very innocent, for I have noticed that 
the look of innocence in boys is proportioned to 
the amount of mischief with which they are stuffed. 
They seem to be determined to risk their lives on 
mow-poles where the hay lies thin. They come 
out from under the stable floor in a despicable state 
of toilet, and cannot give any excuse for their de- 
preciation of apparel. Hens flutter off the nest 
with an unusual squawk, for the boys cannot wait 
any longer for the slow process of laying, and hens 
have no business to stand in the way of Easter. 
The most tedious hours of my boyhood were spent 
in waiting for a hen to eet off her nest. No use 
to scare her off, for then she will get mad, and just 



292 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

as like as not take the &gg with her. Indeed, I think 
the boy is excusable for his haste if his brother 
has a dozen eggs and he has only eleven. 

At this season of the year the hens are mel- 
ancholy. They want to hatch, but how can they? 
They have the requisite disposition, and the capa- 
city, and the feathers, and the nest, and everything 
but the eggs. With that deficit, they sometimes sit 
obstinately and defy the boy's approaches. Many 
a boy has felt the sharp bill of old Dominick strike 
the back of his hand, inflicting a wound that would 
have roused up the whole farmhouse to see w T hat 
was the matter had it not been that the boy wanted 
to excite no suspicion as to the nature of his ex- 
pedition. Immediately over the hen's head comes 
the boy's cap, and there is a scatteration of 
feathers all over the hay-mow, and the boy is 
victor. 

But at last the evening before Easter comes. 
While the old people are on the piazza the children 
come in with the accumulated treasures of many 
weeks, and put down the baskets. Eggs large and 
small, white-shelled and brown, Cochin-Chinas and 
Burrampooters. The character of the hens is vin- 
dicated. The cat may now lie in the sun without 
being kicked by false suspicions. The surprised 
exclamation of parents more than compensates the 
boys for the strategy of long concealment. The 



HIDING EGGS FOR EASTER. 293 

meanest thing in the world is for father and mother 
not to look surprised in such circumstances. 

It sometimes happens that, in the agitation of 
bringing the eggs into the household harbor, the 
boy drops the hat or the basket, and the whole en- 
terprise is shipwrecked. From our own experi- 
ence, it is very difficult to pick up eggs after you 
have once dropped them. You have found the 
same experience in after life. Your hens laid a 
whole nestful of golden eggs on Wall street. You 
had gathered them up. You were bringing them 
in. You expected a world of congratulations, but 
just the day before the consummation, something 
adverse ran against you, and you dropped the 
basket, and the eggs broke. Wise man were you 
if, instead of sitting down to cry or attempting to 
gather up the spilled yolks, you built new nests 
and invited a new laying. 

It is sometimes found on Easter morning that the 
eggs have been kept too long. The boy's inten- 
tions were good enough, but the enterprise had 
been too protracted, and the casting out of the 
dozen was sudden and precipitate. Indeed, that is 
the trouble with some older boys I wot of. They 
keep their money, or their brain, or their influence 
hidden till it rots. They are not willing to come 
forth day by day on a humble mission, doing what 
little good they may, but are keeping themselves 



24 



294 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

hidden till some great Easter-day of triumph, and 
then they will astonish the Church and the world ; 
but they find that faculties too long hidden are fac- 
ulties ruined. Better for an egg to have succeeded 
in making one plain cake for a poor man's table 
than to have failed in making a banquet for the 
House of Lords. 

That was a glad time when on Easter morning 
the eggs went into the saucepan, and came out 
striped, and spotted, and blue, and yellow, and the 
entire digestive capacity of the children was tested. 
You have never had anything so good to eat since. 
You found the eggs. You hid them. They were 
your contribution to the table. Since then you 
have seen eggs scrambled, eggs poached, eggs in 
omelet, eggs boiled, eggs done on one side and 
eggs in a nog, but you shall never find anything 
like the flavor of that Easter morning in boy- 
hood. 

Alas for the boys in town ! Easter comes to 
them on stilts, and they buy their eggs out of the 
store. There is no room for a boy to swing round. 
There is no good place in town to fly a kite, or 
trundle a hoop, or even shout without people's 
throwing up the window to see who is killed. The 
holidays are robbed of half their life because some 
wiseacre will persist in telling him who Santa Claus 
is, while yet he is hanging up his first pair of stock- 



HIDING EGGS FOR EASTER. 295 

ings. Here the boy pays half a dollar for a bottle 
of perfume as big as his finger, when out of town, 
for nothing but the trouble of breathing it, he 
may smell a country full of new-mown hay and 
wild honeysuckle. In a painted bath-tub he takes 
his Saturday bath, careful lest he hit his head 
against the spigot, while in the meadow-brook the 
boys plunge in wild glee, and pluck up health and 
long life from the pebbly bottom. Oh, the joy in the 
spring day, when, after long teasing of mother to 
let you take off your shoes, you dash out on the 
cool grass barefoot, or down the road, the dust 
curling about the instep in warm enjoyment, and, 
henceforth, for months, there shall be no shoes to 
tie or blacken. 

Let us send the boys out into the country every 
year for an airing. If their grandfather and grand- 
mother be yet alive, they will give them a good 
time. They will learn in a little while the mysteries 
of the hay-mow, how to drive oxen and how to 
keep Easter. They will take the old people back 
to the time when you yourself were a boy. There 
will be for the grandson an extra cake in each 
oven. And grandfather and grandmother will sit 
and watch the prodigy, and wonder if any other fam- 
ily ever had such grandchildren. It will be a good 
thing when the evenings are short, and the old 
folks' eyesight is somewhat dim, if you can set up 



296 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

in their house for a little while one or two of these 
lights of childhood. For the time the aches and 
pains of old age will be gone, and they will feel as 
lithe and merry as when sixty years ago they them- 
selves rummaged barrack, and mow, and wagon- 
house, hiding eggs for Easter. 




CHAPTER L. 

SINK OR SWIM. 

WE entered the ministry with a mortal horror 
of extemporaneous speaking. Each week 
we wrote two sermons and a lecture all out, from 
the text to the amen. We did not dare to give out 
the notice of a prayer-meeting unless it was on 
paper. We were a slave to manuscript, and the 
chains were galling ; and three months more of 
such work would have put us in the graveyard. 
We resolved on emancipation. The Sunday night 
was approaching when we expected to make violent 
rebellion against this bondage of pen and paper. 
We had an essay about ten minutes long on some 
Christian subject, which we proposed to preach as 
an introduction to the sermon, resolved, at the close 
of that brief composition, to launch out on the 
great sea of extemporaneousness. 

It so happened that the coming Sabbath night 
was to be eventful in the village. The trustees of 
the church had been building a gasometer back of 
the church, and the night I speak of the building 
was for the first time to be lighted in the modern 

24* 297 



298 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

way. The church was, of course, crowded — not 
so much to hear the preacher as to see how the 
gas would burn. Many were unbelieving, and said 
that there would be an explosion, or a big fire, or 
that in the midst of the service the lights would go 
out. Several brethren disposed to hang on to old 
customs declared that candles and oil were the only 
fit material for lighting a church, and they de- 
nounced the innovation as indicative of vanity on 
the part of the new-comers. They used oil in the 
ancient temple, and it was that which ran down on 
Aaron's beard, and anything that was good enough 
for the whiskers of an old-time priest was good 
enough for a country meeting-house. These stick- 
lers for the oil were present that night, hoping — 
and I think some of them secretly praying — that the 
gas might go out. 

With our ten-minute manuscript we went into 
the pulpit, all in a tremor. Although the gas did 
not burn as brightly as its friends had hoped, still 
it was bright enough to show the people the per- 
spiration that stood in beads on our forehead. We 
began our discourse, and every sentence gave us 
the feeling that we were one step nearer the gal- 
lows. We spoke very slowly, so as to make the 
ten-minute notes last fifteen minutes. During the 
preachment of the brief manuscript we concluded 
that we had never been called to the ministry. We 



SINK OR SWIM. 299 

were in a hot-bath of excitement. People noticed 
our trepidation, and supposed it was because we 
were afraid the gas would go out. Alas ! our fear 
was that it would not go out. As we came toward 
the close of our brief we joined the anti-gas party, 
and prayed that before we came to the last written 
line something would burst, and leave us in the 
darkness. Indeed, we discovered an encouraging 
flicker amid the burners, which gave us the hope 
that the brief which lay before us would be long 
enough for all practical purposes, and that the hour 
of execution might be postponed to some other 
night. As we came to the sentence next to the 
last the lights fell down to half their size, and we 
could just manage to see the audience, as they 
were floating away from our vision. We said to 
ourselves, " Why can't these lights be obliging, and 
go out entirely ?" The wish was gratified. As we 
finished the last line of our brief, and stood on the 
verge of rhetorical destruction, the last glimmer 
of light was extinguished. " It is impossible to 
proceed," we cried out ; "receive the benediction I" 
We crawled down the pulpit in a state of exhila- 
ration ; we never before saw such handsome dark- 
ness. The odor of the escaping gas was to us 
like "gales from Araby." Did a frightened young 
man ever have such fortunate deliverance? The 
providence was probably intended to humble the 



300 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

trustees, yet the scared preacher took advantage 
of it. 

But after we got home we saw the wickedness 
of being in such dread. As the Lord got us out 
of that predicament, we resolved never again to be 
cornered in one similar. Forthwith the thraldom 
was broken, we hope never again to be felt. How 
demeaning that a man with a message from the 
Lord almighty should be dependent upon paper- 
mills and gasometers ! Paper is a non-conductor 
of gospel electricity. If a man have a five-thou- 
sand-dollar bill of goods to sell a customer, he 
does not go up to the purchaser and say, "I have 
some remarks to make to you about these goods, 
but just wait till I get out my manuscript." Be- 
fore he got through reading the argument the cus- 
tomer would be in the next door, making pur- 
chases from another house. 

What cowardice ! Because a few critical hearers 
sit with lead-pencils out to mark down the inaccu- 
racies of extemporaneousness, shall the pulpit 
cower? If these critics do not repent, they will go 
to hell, and take their lead-pencils with them. While 
the great congregation are ready to take the bread 
hot out of the oven, shall the minister be crippled 
in his work because the village doctor or lawyer 
sits carping before him ? To please a few learned 
ninnies a thousand ministers sit writing sermons 



SINK OK SWIM. 301 

on Saturday night till near the break of day, their 
heads hot, their feet cold, and their nerves a-twitch. 
Sermons born on Saturday night are apt to have 
the rickets. Instead of cramping our chests over 
writing-desks, and being the slaves of the pen, let 
us attend to our physical health, that we may have 
more pulpit independence. 

It would be a grand thing if every minister felt 
strong enough in body to thrash any man in his 
audience improperly behaving, but always kept 
back from such assault by the fact that it would be 
wrong to do so. There is a good deal of heart 
and head in our theology, but not enough liver and 
backbone. We need a more stalwart Christian 
character, more roast beef rare, and less calf 's-foot 
jelly. This will make the pulpit more bold and 
the pew more manly. 

Which thoughts came to us this week as we vis- 
ited again the village church aforesaid, and preached 
out of the same old Bible in which, years ago, we 
laid the ten-minute manuscript, and we looked 
upon the same lights that once behaved so badly. 
But we found it had been snowing since the time 
we lived there, and heads that then were black are 
white now, and some of the eyes which looked up 
to us that memorable night when the gasometer 
failed us, thirteen years ago, are closed now, and 
for them all earthly lights have gone out for ever. 



CHAPTER LI. 

SHELLS FROM THE BEACH. 

OUR summer-house is a cottage at East Hamp- 
ton, Long Island, overlooking the sea. Seven- 
teen vessels in sight, schooners, clippers, herma- 
phrodite brigs, steamers, great craft and small. 
Wonder where they come from, and where they are 
going to, and who is aboard ? Just enough clover- 
tops to sweeten the briny air into the most de- 
lightful tonic. We do not know the geological his- 
tory of this place, but imagine that the rest of Long 
Island is the discourse of which East Hampton is 
the peroration. There are enough bluffs to relieve 
the dead level, enough grass to clothe the hills, 
enough trees to drop the shadow, enough society 
to keep one from inanity, and enough quietude to 
soothe twelve months of perturbation. The sea 
hums us to sleep at night, and fills our dreams with 
intimations of the land where the harmony is like 
" the voice of many waters." In smooth weather 
the billows take a minor key ; but when the storm 
gives them the pitch, they break forth with the 

302 



SHELLS 1R0M THE BEACH. 30 3 

clash and uproar of an overture that fills the 
heavens and makes the beach tremble. Strange 
that that which rolls perpetually and never rests 
itself should be a psalm of rest to others ! With 
these sands of the beach we help fill the hour-glass 
of life. Every moment of the day there comes in 
over the waves a flotilla of joy and rest and health, 
and our piazza is the wharf where the stevedores 
unburden their cargo. We have sunrise with her 
bannered hosts in cloth of gold, and moonrise with 
her innumerable helmets and shields and swords 
and ensigns of silver, the morning and the night 
being the two buttresses from which are swung a 
bridge of cloud suspended on strands of sunbeam, 
all the glories of the sky passing to and fro with 
airy feet in silent procession. 

We have wandered far and wide, but found no 
such place to rest in. We can live here forty-eight 
hours in one day, and in a night get a Rip Van 
Winkle sleep, waking up without finding our gun 
rusty or our dog dead. 

No wonder that Mr. James, the first minister of 
this place, lived to eighty years of age, and Mr. 
Hunting, his successor, lived to be eighty one years 
of age, and Doctor Buel, his successor, lived to be 
eighty-two years of age. Indeed, it seems impossi- 
ble for a minister regularly settled in this place to 
get out of the world before his eightieth year. It 



304 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

has been only in cases of " stated supply," or re- 
moval from the place, that early demise has been 
possible. And in each of these cases of decease 
at fourscore it was some unnecessary imprudence 
on their part, or who knows but that they might 
be living yet? That which is good for settled 
pastors being good for other people, you may 
judge the climate here is salutary and delectable 
for all. 

The place was settled in 1648, and that is so 
long ago that it will probably never be unsettled. 
The Puritans took possession of it first, and have 
always held it for the Sabbath, for the Bible and for 
God. Much maligned Puritans ! The world will 
stop deriding them after a while, and the carica- 
turists of their stalwart religion will want to claim 
them as ancestors, but it will be too late then ; for 
since these latter-day folks lie about the Puritans 
now, we will not believe them when they want to 
get into the illustrious genealogical line. 

East Hampton has always been a place of good 
morals. One of the earliest Puritan regulations of 
this place was that licensed liquor-sellers should 
not sell to the young, and that half a pint only 
should be given to four men — an amount so small 
that most drinkers would consider it only a tantali- 
zation. A woman here, in those days, was sen- 
tenced " to pay a fine of fifteen dollars, or to stand 



SHELLS FROM THE BEACH. 305 

one hour with a cleft stick upon her tongue, for 
saying that her husband had brought her to a 
place where there was neither gospel or magis- 
tracy." She deserved punishment of some kind, 
but they ought to have let her off with a fine, for 
no woman's tongue ought to be interfered with. 
When in olden time a Yankee peddler with the 
measles went to church here on the Sabbath for 
the purpose of selling his knickknacks, his behavior 
was considered so perfidious that before the ped- 
dler left town the next morning the young men 
gave him a free ride upon what seems to us an un- 
comfortable and insufficient vehicle, namely, a rail, 
and then dropped him into the duck-pond. But 
such conduct was not sanctioned by the better 
people of the place. Nothing could be more un- 
wholesome for a man with the measles than a 
plunge in a duck-pond, and so the peddler recov- 
ered one thousand dollars damage. So you see 
that every form of misdemeanor was sternly put 
down. Think of the high state of morals and re- 
ligion which induced this people, at an early day, 
at a political town-meeting, to adopt this decree : 
"We do sociate and conjoin ourselves and succes- 
sors to be one town or corporation, and do for our- 
selves and our successors, and such as shall be 
adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into 
combination and confederation together to main- 

25 



306 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

tain and preserve the purity of the gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ which we now possess." 

The pledge of that day has been fully kept ; and 
for sobriety, industry, abhorrence of evil and adher- 
ence to an unmixed gospel, we know not the equal 
of this place. 

That document of two centuries ago reads 
strangely behind the times, but it will be some 
hundreds of years yet before other communities 
come up to the point where that document stops. 
All our laws and institutions are yet to be Chris- 
tianized. The Puritans took possession of this 
land in the name of Christ, and it belongs to him ; 
and if people do not like that religion, let them go 
somewhere else. They can find many lands where 
there is no Christian religion to bother them. Let 
them emigrate to Greenland, and we will provide 
them with mittens, or to the South Sea Islands, 
and we will send them ice-coolers. This land is for 
Christ. Our Legislatures and Congresses shall 
yet pass laws as radically evangelical as the ven- 
erable document above referred to. East Hamp- 
ton, instead of being two hundred years behind, 
is two hundred years ahead. 

Glorious place to summer! Darwin and Stuart, 
Mill and Huxley and Renan have not been through 
here yet. May they miss the train the day they 
start for this place ! With an Atlantic Ocean in 



SHELLS FROM THE BEACH. 307 

which to wash, and a great-hearted, practical, sym- 
pathetic gospel to take care of all the future, who 
could not be happy in East Hampton ? 

The strong sea-breeze ruffles the sheet upon 
which we write, and the " white caps " are tossing 
up as if in greeting to Him who walks the pave- 
ments of emerald and opal : 

" Waft, waft, ye winds, his story, 
And you, ye waters, roll, 
Till, like a sea of glory, 
Jt spreads from pole to pole" 




CHAPTER LII. 

CATCHING THE BAY MAKE. 

IT may be a lack of education on our part, but 
we confess to a dislike for horse-races. We 
never attended but three ; the first in our boyhood, 
the second at a county fair, where we were de- 
ceived as to what would transpire, the third last 
Sabbath morning. We see our friends flush with 
indignation at this last admission ; but let them 
wait a moment before they launch their verdict. 

Our horse was in the pasture-field. It was al- 
most time to start for church, and we needed the 
animal harnessed. The boy came in saying it was 
impossible to catch the bay mare, and calling for our 
assistance. We had on our best clothes, and did 
not feel like exposing ourself to rough usage; but 
we vaulted the fence with pail of water in hand, 
expecting to try the effect of rewards rather than 
punishments. The horse came out generously to 
meet. us. We said to the boy, "She is very tame. 
Strange you cannot catch her." She came near 
enough to cautiously smell the pail, when she sud- 

308 



CA TCHING THE BA Y MARE. 309 

denly changed her mind, and with one wild snort 
dashed off to the other end of the field. 

Whether she was not thirsty, or was critical of 
the manner of presentation, or had apprehensions 
of our motive, or was seized with desire for 
exercise in the open air, she gave us no chance to 
guess. We resolved upon more caution of ad- 
vance and gentler voice, and so laboriously ap- 
proached her; for though a pail of water is light 
for a little way, it gets heavy after you have gone 
a considerable distance, though its contents be half 
spilled away. 

This time we succeeded in getting her nose in- 
serted into the bright beverage. We called her 
by pet names, addressing her as " Poor Dolly !" not 
wishing to suggest any pauperism by that term, 
but only sympathy for the sorrows of the brute 
creation, and told her that she was the finest horse 
that ever was. It seemed to take well. Flatter}'' 
always does — with horses. 

We felt that the time had come for us to produce 
the rope halter, which with our left hand we had 
all the while kept secreted behind our back. We 
put it over her neck, when the beast wheeled, and 
we seized her by the point where the copy-books 
say we ought to take Time, namely, the forelock. 
But we had poor luck. We ceased all caressing 
tone, and changed the subjunctive mood for the 

25* 



3IO AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

imperative. There never was a greater divergence 
of sentiment than at that instant between us and 
the bay mare. She pulled one way, we pulled the 
other. Turning her back upon us, she ejaculated 
into the air two shining horseshoes, both the shape 
of the letter O, the one interjection in contempt 
for the ministry, and the other in contempt for the 
press. 

But catch the horse we must, for we were bound 
to be at church, though just then we did not feel 
at all devotional. We resolved, therefore, with the 
boy, to run her down ; so, by the way of making 
an animated start, we slung the pail at the horse's 
head, and put out on a Sunday morning horse-race. 
Every time she stood at the other end of the field 
waiting for us to come up. She trotted, galloped 
and careered about us, with an occasional neigh 
cheerfully given to encourage us in the pursuit. 
We were getting more and more unprepared in 
body, mind and soul for the sanctuary. Mean- 
while, quite a household audience lined the fence ; 
the children and visitors shouting like excited 
Romans in an amphitheatre at a contest with wild 
beasts, and it was uncertain whether the audience 
was in sympathy with us or the bay mare. 

At this unhappy juncture, she who some years 
ago took us for " better or for worse" came to the 
rescue, finding us in the latter condition. She ad- 



CA TCHING THE BA Y MARE. 3 1 1 

vanced to the field with a wash-basin full of water, 
offering that as sole inducement, and gave one 
call, when the horse went out to meet her, and 
under a hand, not half as strong as ours, gripping 
the mane, the refractory beast was led to the 
manger. 

Standing with our feet in the damp grass and 
our new clothes wet to a sop, we learned then and 
there how much depends on the way you do a 
thing. The proposition we made to the bay mare 
was far better than that offered by our companion ; 
but ours failed and hers succeeded. Not the first 
nor the last time that a wash-basin has beaten a 
pail. So some of us go all through life clumsily 
coaxing and awkwardly pursuing things which we 
want to halter and control. We strain every 
nerve, only to find ourselves befooled and left far 
behind, while some Christian man or woman comes 
into the field, and by easy art captures that which 
evaded us. 

We heard a good sermon that day, but it was 
no more impressive than the besweated lesson of 
the pasture-field, which taught us that no more 
depends upon the thing you do than upon the way 
you do it. The difference between the clean swath 
of that harvester in front of our house and the 
ragged work of his neighbor is in the way he 
swings the scythe, and not in the scythe itself. 



312 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

There are ten men with one talent apiece who do 
more good than the one man with ten talents. A 
basin properly lifted may accomplish more than a 
pail unskillfully sw r ung. A minister for an hour in 
his sermon attempts to chase down those brutish 
in their habits, attempting to fetch them under the 
harness of Christian restraint, and perhaps miser- 
ably fails, when some gentle hand of sisterly or 
motherly affection laid upon the wayward one 
brings him safely in. 

There is a knack in doing things. If all those 
who plough in State and Church had known how 
to hold the handles, and turn a straight furrow, 
and stop the team at the end of the field, the 
world would long ago have been ploughed into 
an Eden. What many people want is gumption — 
a word as yet undefined ; but if you do not know 
what it means, it is very certain you do not pos- 
sess the quality it describes. We all need to study 
Christian tact. The boys in the Baskinridge school- 
house laughed at William L. Dayton's impediment 
of speech, but that did not hinder him from after- 
ward making court- room and senate-chamber thrill 
under the spell of his words. 

In our early home there was a vicious cat that 
would invade the milk-pans, and we, the boys, 
chased her with hoes and rakes, always hitting 
the place where she had been just before, till one 



CATCHING THE BAY MARE. 313 

day father came out with a plain stick of oven- 
wood, and with one little clip back of the ear put 
an end to all of her nine lives. You see every- 
thing depends upon the style of the stroke, and 
not upon the elaborateness of the weapon. The 
most valuable things you try to take will behave 
like the bay mare ; but what you cannot over- 
come by coarse persuasion, or reach at full run, 
you can catch with apostolic guile. Learn the 
first-rate art of doing secular or Christian work, 
and then it matters not whether your weapon be a 
basin or a pail. 




CHAPTER LIII. 

OUR FIRST AXD LAST CIGAR. 

THE time had come in our boyhood which we 
thought demanded of us a capacity to smoke. 
The old people of the household could abide nei- 
ther the sight nor the smell of the Virginia weed. 
When ministers came there, not by positive in- 
junction but by a sort of instinct as to what would 
be safest, they whiffed their pipe on the back steps. 
If the house could not stand sanctified smoke, you 
may know how little chance there was for adoles- 
cent cigar-puffing. 

By some rare good fortune which put in our 
hands three cents, we found access to a tobacco 
store. As the lid of the long, narrow, fragrant 
box opened, and for the first time we owned a 
cigar, our feelings of elation, manliness, superior- 
ity and anticipation can scarcely be imagined, save 
by those who have had the same sensation. Our 
first ride on horseback, though we fell off before 
we got to the barn, and our first pair of new boots 
(real squeakers) we had thought could never be 
surpassed in interest; but when we put the cigar 
to our lips, and stuck the lucifer match to the end 

314 



OUR FIRST AND LAST CIGAR. 315 

of the weed, and commenced to pull with an 
energy that brought every facial muscle to its ut- 
most tension, our satisfaction with this world was so 
great, our temptation was never to want to leave it. 

The cigar did not burn well. It required an 
amount of suction that tasked our determination 
to the utmost. You see that our worldly means 
had limited us to a quality that cost only three 
cents. But we had been taught that nothing great 
was accomplished without effort, and so we puffed 
away. Indeed, we had heard our older brothers 
in their Latin lessons say, Omnia vincet labor ; 
which translated means, If you want to make any- 
thing go, you must scratch for it. 

With these sentiments we passed down the 
village street and out toward our country home. 
Our head did not feel exactly right, and the street 
began to rock from side to side, so that it was un- 
certain to us which side of the street we were on. 
So we crossed over, but found ourself on the same 
side that we were on before we crossed over. In- 
deed, we imagined that we were on both sides at 
the same time, and several fast teams driving be- 
tween. We met another boy, who asked us why 
we looked so pale, and we told him we did not 
look pale, but that he was pale himself. 

We sat down under the bridge and began to 
reflect on the prospect of early decease, and on 



3l6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

the uncertainty of all earthly expectations. We 
had determined to smoke the cigar all up and thus 
get the worth of our money, but were obliged to 
throw three-fourths of it away, yet knew just where 
we threw it, in case we felt better the next day. 

Getting home, the old people were frightened, 
and demanded that we state what kept us so late 
and what was the matter with us. Not feeling 
that we were called to go into particulars, and not 
wishing to increase our parents' apprehension that 
we were going to turn out badly, we summed up 
the case with the statement that we felt miserable 
at the pit of the stomach. We had mustard plas- 
ters administered, and careful watching for some 
hours, when we fell asleep and forgot our disap- 
pointment and humiliation in being obliged to 
throw away three-fourths of our first cigar. Being 
naturally reticent, we have never mentioned it 
until this time. 

But how about our last cigar? It was three 
o'clock Sabbath morning in our Western home. 
We had smoked three or four cigars since tea. 
At that time we wrote our sermons and took an- 
other cigar with each new head of discourse. We 
thought we were getting the inspiration from 
above, but were getting much of it from beneath. 
Our hand trembled along the line ; and strung up 
to the last tension of nerves, we finished our work 



OUR FIRST AND LAST CIGAR. 3IQ 

and started from the room. A book standing on 
the table fell over; and although it was not a large 
book, its fall sounded to our excited system like 
the crack of a pistol. As we went down the stairs 
their creaking made our hair stand on end. As 
we flung ourselves on a sleepless pillow we re- 
solved, God helping, that we had smoked our last 
cigar, and committed our last sin of night-study. 

We kept our promise. With the same resolu- 
tion went overboard coffee and tea. That night 
we were born into a new physical, mental and 
moral life. Perhaps it may be better for some to 
smoke, and study nights, and take exciting tem- 
perance beverages ; but we are persuaded that if 
thousands of people who now go moping, and 
nervous, and half exhausted through life, down 
with " sick headaches " and rasped by irritabilities, 
would try- a good large dose of abstinence, they 
would thank God for this paragraph of personal 
experience, and make the world the same bright 
place we find it — a place so attractive that nothing 
short of heaven would be good enough to ex- 
change for it. 

The first cigar made us desperately sick ; the 
throwing away of our last made us gloriously well. 
For us the croaking of the midnight owl hath 
ceased, and the time of the singing of birds has 
come. 

26 



CHAPTER LIV. 

MOVE, MOVING, MOVED. 

THE first of May is to many the beeinnino- of 
the year. From that are dated the break- 
ages, the social startings, the ups and downs, of 
domestic life. One-half New York is moyino- into 
smaller houses, the other half into larger. The 
past year's success or failure decides which way 
the horses of the furniture-wagon shall turn their 
heads. 

Days before, the work of packing commenced. 
It is astonishing how many boxes and barrels are 
required to contain all your wares. You come 
upon a thousand things that you had forgotten, 
too good to throw away and too poor to keep: 
old faded carpet-bags that would rouse the mirth 
of the town if you dared to carry them into the 
street ; straw hats out of the fashion : beayers 
that you ought to haye giyen away while they 
micrht haye been useful ; odd eloyes, shoes, coats 
and slips of carpet that haye been the nest of rats, 
and a thousand things that you laid away because 
you some day might want them, but neyer will. 

320 



MO VE, MO VING, MO FED. 3 2 I 

For the last few days in the old house the ac- 
commodations approach the intolerable. Every- 
thing is packed up. The dinner comes to you on 
shattered crockery which is about to be thrown 
away, and the knives are only painful reminis- 
cences of what they once were. The teapot that 
we used before we got our "new set" comes on 
in time to remind us how common we once were. 
You can upset the coffee without soiling the table- 
cloth, for there is none. The salt and sugar come 
to you in cups looking so much alike that you find 
out for the first time how coffee tastes when salted, 
or fish when it is sweetened. There is no place 
to sit down, and you have no time to do so if you 
found one. The bedsteads are down, and you roll 
into the corner at night, a self-elected pauper, and 
all the night long have a quarrel with your pillow, 
which persists in getting out of bed, and your foot 
wanders out into the air, feeling for greater length 
of cover. If the children cry in the night, you will 
not find the matches nor the lamp nor anything 
else save a trunk just in time to fall over it, get- 
ting up with confused notions as to which is the 
way to bed, unless there be some friendly voice to 
hail you through the darkness. 

The first of May dawns. The carts come. It 
threatens rain, but not a drop until you get your 
best rosewood chairs out of doors, and your bed- 



322 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

ding on the top of the wagon. Be out at twelve 
o'clock you must, for another family are on your 
heels, and Thermopylae was a very tame pass com- 
pared with the excitement which rises when two 
families meet in the same hall — these moving out 
and those moving in. They swear, unless they 
have positive principles to prohibit. A mere 
theory on the subject of swearing will be no hin- 
drance. Long-established propriety of speech, 
buttressed up by the most stalwart determination, 
is the only safety. Men who talk right all the 
rest of the year sometimes let slip on the first of 
May. We know a member of the church who 
uses no violence of speech except on moving-day, 
and then he frequently cries out: "By the great 
United States !" 

All day long the house is full of racket: "Look 
out how you scratch that table!" "There! you 
have dropped the leg out of that piano !" " There 
goes the looking-glass !" " Ouch ! you have smashed 
my finger !" " Didn't you see you were pushing 
me against the wall ?" " Get out of our way ! It 's 
one o'clock, and your things are not half moved ! 
Carmen ! take hold and tumble these things into 
the street!" Our carmen and theirs get into a 
fight. Our servants on our side, their servants on 
theirs. We, opposed to anything but peace, try to 
quiet the strife, yet, if they must go on, feel we 



MOVE, MOVING, MOVED. 323 

would like to have our men triumph. Like Eng- 
land during our late war, we remain neutral, yet 
have our preferences as to which shall beat. Now 
dash comes the rain, and the water cools off the 
heat of the combatants. The carmen must drive 
fast, so as to get the things out of the wet, but 
slow, so as not to rub the furniture. 

As our last load starts we go in to take a fare- 
well look at the old place. In that parlor we have 
been gay with our friends many a time, and as we 
glance round the room we seem to see the great 
group of their faces. The best furniture we ever 
had in our parlor was a circle of well-wishers. 
Here is the bedroom where we slept off the 
world's cares, and got up glad as the lark when 
the morning sky beckons it upward. Many a 
time this room has been full of sleep from door- 
sill to ceiling. We always did feel grandly after 
we had put an eight-hour nap between us and life's 
perplexities. We are accustomed to divide our 
time into two parts : the first to be devoted to 
hard, blistering, consuming work, and the rest to 
be given to the most jubilant/?//?/ and sleep comes 
under the last head. 

We step into the nursery for a last look. The 
crib is gone, and the doll-babies and the block- 
houses, but the echoes have not yet stopped gal- 
loping ; May's laugh, and Edith's glee, and Frank's 

26* 



324 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

shout, as he urged the hobby-horse to its utmost 
speed, both heels struck into the flanks, till out of 
his glass eye the horse seemed to say : " Do that 
ao-ain, and I will throw you to the other side of the 
trundle-bed I" Farewell, old house ! It did not 
suit us exactly, but thank God for the good times 
we had in it ! 

Moving-day is almost gone. It is almost night. 
Tumble everything into the new house. Put up 
the bedsteads. But who has the wrench, and 
who the screws ? Packed up, are they ? In what 
box? It may be any one of the half dozen. Ah! 
now I know in which box you will find it ; in the 
last one you open ! Hungry, are you ? Xo time 
to talk of food till the crockery is unpacked. True 
enough, here they come. That last jolt of the 
cart finished the teacups. The jolt before that 
fractured some of the plates, and Bridget now 
drops the rest of them. The Paradise of crockery- 
merchants is moving-day. I think, from the re- 
sults which I see, that they must about the first of 
May spend most of their time in praying for suc- 
cess in business. 

Seated on the boxes, you take tea, and then 
down with the carpets. They must be stretched, 
and pieced, and pulled, and matched. The whole 
family are on their knees at the work, and red 
in the face, and before the tacks are driven all 



MOVE, MOVING, MOVED. $2$ 

the finders have been hammered once and are 
taking a second bruising. Nothing is where you 
expected to find it. Where is the hammer ? Where 
are the tacks ? Where the hatchet ? Where the 
screw-driver? Where the nails? Where the 
window-shades? Where is the slat to that old 
bedstead ? Where are the rollers to that stand ? 
The sweet-oil has been emptied into the black- 
berry-jam. The pickles and the plums have gone 
out together a-swimming. The lard and the but- 
ter have united as skillfully as though a grocer 
had mixed them. The children who thought it 
would be grand sport to move are satiated, and 
one-half the city of New York at the close of 
May-day go to bed worn out, sick and disgusted. 
It is a social earthquake that annually shakes the 
city. 

It may be that very soon some of our rich rela- 
tives will, at their demise, " will " us each one a 
house, so that we shall be permanently fixed. We 
should be sorry to have them quit the world under 
any circumstances ; but if, determined to go any- 
how, they should leave us a house, the void 
would not be so large, especially if it were a 
house well furnished and having all the modern 
improvements. We would be thankful for any 
good advice they might leave us, but should more 
highly appreciate a house. 



326 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

May all the victims of moving-day find their 
new home attractive ! If they have gone into a 
smaller house, let them congratulate themselves 
at the thought that it takes less time to keep a 
small house clean than a big one. May they have 
plenty of Spaulding's glue with which to repair 
breakages ! May the carpets fit better than they 
expected, and the family that moved out have 
taken all their cockroaches and bedbugs with 
them ! 

And, better than all — and this time in sober 
earnest — by the time that moving-day comes 
again, may they have made enough money to buy 
a house from which they will never have to move 
until the House of many mansions be ready to 
receive them ! 




CHAPTER LV. 

ADVANTAGE OF SMALL LIBRARIES. 

WE never see a valuable book without want- 
ing it. The most of us have been struck 
through with a passion for books. Town, city and 
state libraries to us are an enchantment. We hear 
of a private library of ten thousand volumes, and 
think what a heaven the owner must be living in. 
But the probability is that the man who has five 
hundred volumes is better off than the man who 
has five thousand. The large private libraries in 
uniform editions, and unbroken sets, and Russia 
covers, are, for the most part, the idlers of the day ; 
while the small libraries, with broken-backed books, 
and turned-down leaves, and lead-pencil scribbles 
in the margin, are doing the chief work for the 
world and the Church. 

For the most part, the owners of large collec- 
tions have their chief anxiety about the binding 
and the type. Take down the whole set of Walter 
Scott's novels, and find that only one of them 
has been read through. There are Motley's his- 
tories on that shelf; but get into conversation 

327 



328 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

about the prince of Orange, and see that Motley 
has not been read. I never was more hungry 
than once while walking in a Charleston mill amid 
whole harvests of rice. One handful of that grain 
in a pudding would have been worth more to me 
than a thousand tierces uncooked. Great libraries 
are of but little value if unread, and amid great 
profusion of books the temptation is to read but 
little. If a man take up a book, and feel he will 
never have a chance to see it again, he says : " I 
must read it now or never," and before the day is 
past has devoured it. The owner of the large 
library says : " I have it on my shelf, and any 
time can refer to it." 

What we can have any time we never have. 
I found a group of men living at the foot of 
Whiteface Mountain who had never been to the 
top, while I had come hundreds of miles to ascend 
it. They could go any time so easily. It is often 
the case that those who have plain copies of his- 
tory are better acquainted with the past than those 
who have most highly adorned editions of Bancroft, 
Prescott, Josephus and Herodotus. It ought not 
so to be, you say. I cannot help that ; so it is. 

Books are sometimes too elegantly bound to be 
read. The gilt, the tinge, the ivory, the clasps, 
seem to say : " Hands off!" The thing that most 
surprised me in Thomas Carlyle's library was the 



ADVANTAGE OF SMALL LIB R A RLE S. 329 

fewness of the books. They had all seen service. 
None of them had paraded in holiday dress. They 
were worn and battered. He had flung them at 
the ages. 

More beautiful than any other adornments are 
the costly books of a princely library ; but let not 
the man of small library stand looking into the gar- 
nished alcoves wishing for these unused volumes. 
The workman who dines on roast beef and new 
Irish potatoes will be healthier and stronger than 
he who begins with " mock-turtle," and goes up 
through the long lane of a luxuriant table till he 
comes to almond-nuts. I put the man of one 
hundred books, mastered, against the man of one 
thousand books of which he has only a smat- 
tering. 

On lecturing routes I have sometimes been 
turned into costly private libraries to spend the 
day ; and I reveled in the indexes, and scrutinized 
the lids, and set them back in as straight a row as 
when I found them, yet learned little. But on my 
way home in the cars I took out of my satchel a 
book that had cost me only one dollar and a half, 
and afterward found that it had changed the course 
of my life and helped decide my eternal destiny. 

We get many letters from clergymen asking ad- 
vice about reading, and deploring their lack of 
books. I warrant they all have books enough to 



330 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

shake earth and heaven with, if the books were 
rightly used. A man who owns a Bible has. to be- 
gin with, a library as Ion £ as from here to heaven. 
The dullest preachers I know of have splendid libra- 
ries. They own everything that has been written 
on a miracle, and yet when you hear them preach, 
if you did not get sound asleep, that would be a 
miracle. They have all that Calvin and other 
learned men wrote about election, and while you 
hear them you feel that you have been elected to 
be bored. They have been months and years turn- 
ing over the heavy tomes on the divine attributes, 
trying to understand God, while some plain Chris- 
tian, with a Xew Testament in his hand, goes into 
the next alley, and sees in the face of an invalid 
woman peace and light and comfort and joy which 
teach him in one hour what God is. 

There are two kinds of dullness — learned dull- 
ness and ignorant dullness. We think the latter 
preferable, for it is apt to be more spicy. You can- 
not measure the length of a man's brain, nor the 
width of his heart, nor the extent of his usefulness 
bv the size of his library. 

Life is so short you cannot know everything: 
There are but few things we need to know, but let 
us know them well. People who know everything 
do nothing. You cannot read all that comes out. 
Everv book read without digestion is so much dvs- 



ADVANTAGE OF SMALL LIBRARIES. 33 1 

pepsia. Sixteen apple-dumplings at one meal are 
not healthy. 

In our age, when hundreds of books are launched 
every day from the press, do not be ashamed to 
confess ignorance of the majority of the volumes 
printed. If you have no artistic appreciation, spend 
neither your dollars nor your time on John Ruskin. 
Do not say that you are fond of Shakspeare if you 
are not interested in him, and after a year's study 
would not know Romeo from John Falstaff. There 
is an amazing amount of lying about Shakspeare. 

Use to the utmost what books you have, and do 
not waste your time in longing after a great library. 
You wish you could live in the city and have ac- 
cess to some great collection of books. Be not 
deceived. The book of the library which you want 
will be out the day you want it. I longed to live 
in town that I might be in proximity to great libra- 
ries. Have lived in town thirteen years, and never 
found in the public library the book I asked for 
but once ; and getting that home, I discovered it 
was not the one I wanted. Besides, it is the book 
that you own that most profits, not that one which 
you take from " The Athenaeum " for a few days. 

Excepting in rare cases, you might as well send 

to the foundling hospital and borrow a baby as to 

borrow a book with the idea of its being any great 

satisfaction. We like a baby in our cradle, but 
27 



L 



33 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

prefer that one which belongs to the household. 
We like a book, but want to feel it is ours. We 
never yet got any advantage from a borrowed book. 
We hope those never reaped any profit from the 
books they borrowed from us, but never returned. 
We must have the right to turn down the leaf, and 
underscore the favorite passage, and write an ob- 
servation in the margin in such poor chirography 
that no one else can read it and we ourselves are 
sometimes confounded. 

All success to great libraries, and skillful book- 
bindery, and exquisite typography, and fine-tinted 
plate paper, and beveled boards, and gilt edges, 
and Turkey morocco ! but we are determined that 
frescoed alcoves shall not lord it over common 
shelves, and Russia binding shall not overrule 
sheepskin, and that " full calf" shall not look down 
on pasteboard. We war not against great libra- 
ries. We only plead for the better use of small 
ones. 



C^S^fe^2> 



CHAPTER LVI. 

REFORMATION IN LETTER-WRITING. 

WE congratulate the country on the revolu- 
tion in epistolary correspondence. Through 
postal cards we not only come to economy in 
stamps, and paper, and ink, and envelopes, but to 
education in brevity. As soon as men and women 
get facility in composition they are tempted to 
prolixity. Hence some of us formed the habit of 
beginning to read a letter on the second page, be- 
cause we knew that the writer would not get 
a-going before that ; and then we were apt to stop 
a page or two before the close, knowing that the 
remaining portions would be taken in putting 
down the brakes. 

The postal card is a national deliverance. With- 
out the conventional " I take my pen in hand," or 
other rigmarole — which being translated means, 
" I am not quite ready to begin just now, but will 
very soon " — the writer states directly, and in ten 
or twenty words, all his business. 

While no one can possibly have keener appre- 
ciation than we of letters of sympathy, encourage- 

333 



334 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

ment and good cheer, there is a vast amount of 
letter-writing that amounts to nothing. Some of 
them we carry in our pockets, and read over and 
over again, until they are worn out with handling. 
But we average about twenty begging letters a 
day. They are always long, the first page taken 
up in congratulations upon " big heart," " wide in- 
fluence," " Christian sympathies," and so on, wind- 
ing up with a solicitation for five dollars, more or 
less. We always know from the amount of lather 
put on that we are going to be shaved. The 
postal card will soon invade even that verbosity, 
and the correspondent will simply say, " Poor — 
very — children ten — chills and fever myself — no 
quinine — desperate — your money or your life — 
Bartholomew Wiggins, Dismal Swamp, Iowa." 

The advantage of such a thing is that if you do 
not answer such a letter no offence is taken, it is 
so short and costs only a cent ; whereas, if the 
author had taken a great sheet of letter paper, 
filled it with compliments and graceful solicitations, 
folded it, and run the gummed edge along the lips 
at the risk of being poisoned, and stuck on a 
stamp (after tedious examination of it to see 
whether or not it had been used before, or had 
only been mauled in your vest pocket), the offence 
would have been mortal, and you would have been 
pronounced mean and unfit for the ministry. 



REFORMATION IN LETTER-WRITING. 335 

Postal cards are likewise a relief to that large 
class of persons who by sealed envelope are 
roused to inquisitiveness. As such a closed letter 
lies on the mantel-piece unopened, they wonder 
whom it is from, and what is in it, and they hold it 
up between them and the light to see what are the 
indications, and stand close by and look over your 
shoulder while you read it, and decipher from your 
looks whether it is a love-letter or a dun. The 
postal card is immediate relief to them, for they 
can read for themselves, and can pick up informa- 
tion on various subjects free of charge. 

But, after all, the great advantage of this new 
postal arrangement is economy in the consumption 
of time. It will practically add several years to a 
man's life, and will keep us a thousand times, at 
the beginning of our letters, from saying " Dear 
Sir" to those who are not at all dear, and will save 
us from surrendering ourselves with a " Yours, 
truly," to those to whom we will never belong. 
We hail the advent of the postal-card system. 



CHAPTER LVII. 

ROYAL MARRIAGES. 

THERE has lately been such a jingle of bells 
in St. Petersburg and London that we have 
heard them quite across the sea. The queen's 
son has married the daughter of the Russian em- 
peror. We are glad of it. It is always well to 
have people marry who are on the same level. 
The famous affiancing in New York of a coachman 
with the daughter of the millionaire who employed 
him did not turn out well. It was bad for her, but 
worse for the coachman. Eagle and ox are both 
well in their places, but let them not marry. The 
ox would be dizzy in the eyrie, and the eagle ill at 
home in the barnyard. When the children of two 
royal homes are united, there ought be no be- 
grudging of powder for the cannonading, or of 
candles for the illumination. All joy to the duke 
of Edinburgh and his fortunate duchess. 

But let not our friends across the sea imagine 
that we have no royal marriages here in this west- 
ern wilderness. Whenever two hearts come to- 
gether pledged to make each other happy, binding 

336 



ROYAL MARRIAGES. 337 

all their hopes and fears and anticipations in one 
sheaf, calling on God to bless and angels to wit- 
ness, though no organ may sound the wedding- 
march, and no bells may chime, and no dean of 
Westminster travel a thousand miles to pronounce 
the ceremony, — that is a royal marriage. 

When two young people start out on life to- 
gether with nothing but a determination to suc- 
ceed, avoiding the invasion of each other's idio- 
syncracies, not carrying the candle near the gun- 
powder, sympathetic with each other's employment, 
willing to live on small means till they get large 
facilities, paying as they go, taking life here as a 
discipline, with four eyes watching its perils, and 
with four hands fighting its battles, whatever 
others may say or do, — that is a royal marriage. 
It is so set down in the heavenly archives, and the 
orange blossoms shall wither on neither side the 
grave. 

We deplore the fact that because of the fearful 
extravagances of modern society many of our 
best people conclude that they cannot possibly 
afford to marry. 

We are getting a fearful crop of old bachelors. 
They swarm around us. They go through life 
lop-sided. Half dressed, they sit round cold morn- 
ings, all a-shiver, sewing on buttons and darning 
socks, and then go down to a long boarding-house 



33& AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

table which is bounded on the north and south and 
east and west by the Great Sahara Desert. We 
do not pity them at all. May all their buttons be 
off to-morrow morning ! Why do they not set up 
a plain home of their own and come into the ark 
two and two ? 

The supporting of a wife is looked upon as a 
great horror. Why, dear friends, with right and 
healthy notions of time and eternity it is very easy 
to support a wife if she be of the kind worth sup- 
porting. If she be educated into false notions of 
refinement and have " young ladies' institutes" 
piled on her head till she be imbecile, you will 
never be able to support her. Everything depends 
on whether you take for your wife a woman or a 
doll-baby. Our opinion is that three-fourths the 
successful men of the day owe much of their pros- 
perity to the wife's help. The load of life is so 
heavy it takes a team of two to draw it. The ship 
wants not only a captain, but a first mate. Society 
to-day, trans- Atlantic and cis- Atlantic, very much 
needs more royal marriages. 



*a 




CHAPTER LVIII. 

THREE VISITS. 

YESTERDAY was Saturday to you, but it was 
Sunday to me. In other words, it was a day 
of rest. We cannot always be working. If you 
drive along in a deep rut, and then try to turn off, 
you are very apt to break the shafts. A skillful 
driver is careful not to get into a deep rut. You 
cannot always be keeping on in the same way. 
We must have times of leisure and recreation. 

A great deal of Christian work amounts to noth- 
ing, from the fact that it is not prefaced and ap- 
pendixed by recreation. Better take hold of a 
hammer and give one strong stroke and lay it 
down than to be all the time so fagged out that we 
cannot move the hammer. 

Well, yesterday being a day of rest to me, I made 
three visits in New York. 

The first was to the Tombs — an institution seem- 
ingly full now, a man or woman or boy at every 
wicket. A great congregation of burglars, thieves, 
pickpockets and murderers. For the most part, 
they are the clumsy villains of society ; the nimble, 
spry ones get out of the way, and are not caught. 

339 



540 af.:v:-z the tza-tazle- 

There are those who are agile as well as depraved 
in that dark place. Stokes, representing the aris- 
tocracy of crime : Fester, the democracy of sin 
ana Rozensweig. the brute. Each ceii a commen- 
tary" upon the Scrdpture passage. " The way of the 
transgressor is hard." 

I was amazed to see that the youth are in the 
majority in that building. I said to the turnkey : 
" What a pity it is that that bright fellow is in here !" 
" Oh.." he says. " these bright fellows keep us busy." 
I talked some with the boys, and they laughed : but 
there was a catch in the guffaw, as though the 
laughter on its way had stumbled oyer a ^roan. It 
was not a deep laugh and a laugh all oyer., as boys 
generally do when they are merry. These boys 
have had no chance. They have been in the 
school of crime all their days, and are now only 
takir.y their dtzret of "M. I'." — master of villainy. 

God hasten the time when our Sabbath-schoris. 
instead of being dower-pots for a few choice chil- 
dren, shall gather up the perishing rabble outside, 
like Ralph Wells' school in New York, and Father 
Hawley's school in Hartford, and John Wana- 
maker's school in Philadelphia ! There is not much 
chance in our fashionable Sunday-schools for a boy 
out at the elbows. Many of our schools pride 
themselves on being- ailt-edored : and when we go 
out to fulfill the Saviour's command. "Feed : 



THREE VISITS. 34 1 

lambs," we look out chiefly for white fleeces. I 
like that school the best which, in addition to the 
glorious gospel, carries soap and fine-tooth combs. 
God save the dying children of the street ! I saw 
a child in the Tombs four years of age, and said, 
"What in the world can this little child be doing 
here ?" They told me the father had been ar- 
rested and the child had to go with him. Alle- 
gory, parable, prophecy : " Where the father goes 
the child goes." Father inside the grates, and son 
outside waiting to get in. 

All through the corridors of that prison I saw 
Scripture passages : " I am the way of life ;" 
" Believe in the Lord, and thou shalt be saved ;" 
and like passages. Who placed them there ? 
The turnkey? No. The sheriff? No. They 
are marks left by the city missionary and Chris- 
tian philanthropist in recognition of that gospel 
by which the world is to be regenerated or never 
saved at all. 

I wish they would get some other name for that — 
the Tombs — for it is the cleanest prison I ever saw. 
But the great want of that prison and of all others 
is sunshine. God's light is a purifier. You can- 
not expect reformation where you brood over a 
man with perpetual midnight. Oh that some 
Howard or Elizabeth Fry would cry through all 
the dungeons of the earth, "Let there be light!" 



34 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

I never heard of anybody being brought to God 
or reformed through darkness. God himself is 
light, and that which is most like God is most 
healthful and pure. 

Saddened by this awful wreck of men and 
morals, we came along the corridors where the 
wives stood weeping at the wicket-door of their 
husbands, and parents over their lost children. It 
was a very sad place. There were some men I was 
surprised to find there — men whom I had seen in 
other places, in holy places, in consecrated places. 

We came out into the sunlight after that, and 
found ourselves very soon in the art-gallery at 
Twenty-third street. That was my second visit. 
Mr. Kensett, the great artist, recently died, and 
six hundred and fifty of his pictures are now on 
exhibition. In contrast with the dark prison scene, 
how beautiful the canvas ! Mr. Kensett had an 
irresistible way of calling trees and rocks and 
waters into his pictures. He only beckoned and 
they came. Once come, he pinioned them for ever. 
Why, that man could paint a breeze on the water, so 
it almost wet your face with the spray. So restful 
are his pictures you feel after seeing them as 
though for half a day you had been sprawled un- 
der a tree in July weather, summered through and 
through. 

Thirty of such pictures he painted each year in 



THREE VISITS. 343 

one hundred and twenty days, and then died — 
quickly and unwarned, dropping his magician's 
wand, to be picked up never. I wondered if he 
was ready, and if the God whom he had often met 
amid the moss on the sea-cliffs and in the offing 
was the God who pardoned sin and by his grace 
saves painter and boor. The Lord bless the un- 
appreciated artists ; they do a glorious work for 
God and the world, but for the most part live in 
penury, and the brightest color on their palette is 
crimson with their own blood. 

May the time hasten when the Frenchmen who 
put on canvas their Cupids poorly clad, and the 
Germans who hang up homely Dutch babies 
in the arms of the Virgin Mary and call them 
Madonnas, shall be overruled by the artists who, 
like Kensett, make their canvas a psalm of praise 
to the Lord of the winds and the waters ! 

I stepped across the way into the Young Men's 
Christian Association of New York, with its read- 
ing-rooms and library and gymnasium and bath- 
rooms, all means of grace — a place that proposes 
to charm young men from places of sin by making 
religion attractive. It is a palace for the Lord — 
the pride of New York, or ought to be ; I do not 
believe it really is, but it ought to be. It is fifty 
churches with its arms of Christian usefulness 
stretched out toward the young men. 

28 



344 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

If a young man come in mentally worn out, it 
gives him dumb-bells, parallel bars and a bowling- 
alley with no rum at either end of it. If physi- 
cally worsted, it rests him amid pictures and 
books and newspapers. If a young man come 
in wanting something for the soul, there are the 
Bible-classes, prayer-meetings and preaching of 
the gospel. 

Religion wears no monk's cowl in that place, no 
hair shirt, no spiked sandals, but the floor and the 
ceiling and the lounges and the tables and the 
cheerful attendants seem to say : "Her ways are 
ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." 

I never saw a more beautiful scene in any public 
building than on one of these bright sofas, fit for 
any parlor in New York, where lay a weary, plain, 
exhausted man resting — sound asleep. 

Another triumph of Christianity that building 
is — a Christianity that is erecting lighthouses on 
all the coasts, and planting its batteries on every 
hill-top, and spreading its banquets all the world 
over. 

Well, with these reflections I started for Brooklyn. 
It was just after six o'clock, and tired New York 
was going home. Street cars and ferries all 
crowded. Going home ! Some to bright places, 
to be lovingly greeted and warmed and fed and 
rested. Others to places dark and uncomely ; but 



THREE VISITS. 



345 



as I sat down in my own home I could not help 
thinking of the three spectacles. I had seen dur- 
ing the day Sin, in its shame ; Art, in its beauty ; 
Religion, in its work of love. God give repent- 
ance to the first, wider appreciation to the second 
and universal conquest to the third ! 




CHAPTER LIX. 

MANAHA CHTANIENKS. 

WE should like to tell so many of our readers 
as have survived the pronunciation of the 
above word that the Indians first called the site 
on which New York was built Manahachtanienks. 
The translation of it is, " The place where they all 
got drunk." Most uncomplimentary title ; we are 
glad that it has been changed ; for though New 
York has several thousand unlicensed grog-shops, 
we consider the name inappropriate, although, if 
intemperance continues to increase as rapidly for 
the next hundred years as during the last twenty 
years, the time will come when New York may 
appropriately take its old Indian nomenclature. 

Old-time New York is being rapidly forgotten, 
and it may be well to revive some historical facts. 

At an expense of three thousand dollars a year 
men with guide-book in hand go through the 
pyramids of Egypt and the picture-galleries of 
Rome and the ruins of Pompeii, when they have 
never seen the strange and historical scenes at 
home. 

346 




jm 



m 



1111 
til 



in- 












'' " 



MANAHACHTANIENKS. 349 

We advise the people who live in Brooklyn, 
Jersey City and up- town New York to go on an 
exploration. 

Go to No. 1 Broadway, and remember that 
George Washington and Lord Cornwallis once 
lived there. 

Go to the United States Treasury, on Wall 
street, and remember that in front of it used to 
stand a pillory and a whipping-post. 

In a building that stood where the United States 
Treasury stands, General Washington was installed 
as President. In the open balcony he stood with 
silver buckles and powdered hair, in dress of dark 
silk velvet. (People in those days dressed more 
than we moderns. Think of James Buchanan or 
General Grant inaugurated with hair and shoes 
fixed up like that !) 

Go to the corner of Pearl and Broad streets, 
and remember that was the scene of Washington's 
farewell to the officers with whom he had been so 
long associated. 

Go to Canal street, and remember it was so 
called because it once was literally a canal. 

The electric telegraph was born in the steeple 
of the old Dutch church, now the New York post- 
office — that is, Benjamin Franklin made there his 
first experiments in electricity. When the other 
denominations charge the Dutch Church with being 

28* 



350 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

slow, they do not know that the world got its light- 
ning out of one of its church steeples. 

Washington Irving was born in Williams street, 
halfway between John and Fulton. " Knicker- 
bocker " was considered very saucy ; but if any 
man ever had a right to say mirthful things about 
New York, it was Washington Irving, who was 
born there. 

At the corner of Varick and Charlton streets 
was a house in which Washington, John Adams 
and Aaron Burr resided. 

George Whitfield preached at the corner of 
Beekman and Nassau streets. 

But why particularize, when there is not a block 
or a house on the great thoroughfare which has 
not been the scene of a tragedy, a fortune ruined, 
a reputation sacrificed, an agony suffered or a 
soul lost? 




CHAPTER LX. 

A DIP IN THE SEA. 

SHAKSPEARE has been fiercely mauled by 
the critics for confusion of metaphor in speak- 
ing of taking up " arms against a sea of troubles." 
The smart fellows say, How could a man take 
" arms against a sea" ? In other words, it is not 
possible to shoot the Pacific Ocean. But what 
Shakspeare suggests is, this jocund morning, 
being done all around the coast from Florida to 
Newfoundland, especial regiments going out from 
Cape May, Long Branch, East Hampton, Newport 
and Nahant; ten thousand bathers, with hands 
thrown into the air, " taking up arms against the 
sea." But the old giant has only to roll over once 
on his bed of seaweed, and all this attacking- host 
are flung prostrate upon the beach. 

The sensation of sea-bathing is about the same 
everywhere. First you have the work of putting 
on the appropriate dress, sometimes wet and chill 
from the previous bathing. You get into the gar- 
ments cautiously, touching them at as few points 
as possible, your face askew, and with a swift 

351 



35 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE, 

draft of breath through your front teeth, punctuat- 
ing the final lodgment of each sleeve and fold 
with a spasmodic " Oh !" Then, having placed your 
watch where no villainous straggler may be in- 
duced to examine it to see whether he can get to 
the depot in time for the next train, you issue 
forth ingloriously, your head down in conscious- 
ness that you are cutting a sorry figure before the 
world. Barefoot as a mendicant, your hair dishev- 
eled in the wind, the stripes on your clothes 
strongly suggestive of Sing Sing, your appearance 
a caricature of humankind, you wander up and 
down the beach a creature that the land is evi- 
dently trying to shake off and the sea is unwilling 
to take. But you are consoled by the fact that all 
the rest are as mean and forlorn-looking as your- 
self; and so you wade in, over foot- top, unto the 
knee, and waist deep. The water is icy-cold, so 
that your teeth chatter and your frame quakes, 
until you make a bold dive ; and in a moment you 
and the sea are good friends, and you are not 
certain whether you have surrendered to the 
ocean or the ocean has surrendered to you. 

At this point begin the raptures of bathing. 
You have left the world on the beach, and are 
caught up in the arms of experiences that you 
never feel on land. If you are far enough out, 
the breaking wave curves over you like a roof 



A DIP IN THE SEA. 353 

inlaid and prismatic, bending down on the other 
side of you in layers of chalk and drifts of snow, 
and the lightning flash of the foam ends in the 
thunder of the falling wave. You fling aside from 
your arms, as worthless, amethyst and emerald 
and chrysoprase. Your ears are filled with the 
halo of sporting elements, and your eyes with all 
tints and tinges and double-dyes and liquid em- 
blazonment. You leap and shout and clap your 
hands, and tell the billows to come on, and in 
excess of glee greet persons that you never saw 
before and never will again, and never want to, 
and act so wildly that others would think you 
demented but that they also are as fully let loose ; 
so that if there be one imbecile there is a whole 
asylum of lunatics. 

It is astonishing how many sounds mingle in 
the water : the faint squall of the affrighted child, 
the shrill shriek of the lady just introduced to the 
uproarious hilarities, the casouse of the diver, the 
snort of the half-strangled, the clear giggle of 
maidens, the hoarse bellow of swamped obesity, 
the whine of the convalescent invalid, the yell of 
unmixed delight, the te-hee and squeak of the 
city exquisite learning how to laugh out loud, the 
splash of the brine, the cachinnation of a band of 
harmless savages, the stun of the surge on your 
right ear, the hiss of the surf, the saturnalia of 



354 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

the elements ; while overpowering all other sounds 
are the orchestral harmonies of the sea, which roll 
on through the ages, all shells, all winds, all cav- 
erns, all billows heard in " the oratorio of the 
creation." 

But while bathing, the ludicrous will often break 
through the grand. Swept hither and thither, you 
find, moving in reel and cotillon, saraband and 
rigadoon and hornpipe, Quakers and Presbyterians 
who are down on the dance. Your sparse clothing 
feels the stress of the waves, and you think what 
an awful thing it would be if the girdle should 
burst or a button break, and you should have, 
out of respect to the feelings of others, to go 
up the beach sidewise or backward or on your 
hands and knees. 

Close beside you, in the surf, is a judge of the 
Court of Appeals, with a garment on that looks 
like his grandmother's night-gown just lifted from 
the wash-tub and not yet wrung out. On the 
other side is a maiden with a twenty-five-cent 
straw hat on a head that ordinarily sports a hun- 
dred dollars' worth of millinery. Yonder is a 
doctor of divinity with his head in the sand and 
his feet beating the air, traveling heavenward, while 
his right hand clutches his wife's foot, as much as 
to say, " My feet are useless in this emergency ; 
give me the benefit of yours." 



A DIP IN THE SEA. 355 

Now a stronger wave, for which none are ready, 
dashes in, and with it tumble ashore, in one great 
wreck of humanity, small craft and large, stout 
hulk and swift clipper, helm first, topsail down, 
forestay-sail in tatters, keel up, everything gone to 
pieces in the swash of the surges. 

Oh, the glee of sea-bathing! It rouses the 
apathetic. It upsets the supercilious and prag- 
matical. It is balsamic for mental wounds. It 
is a tonic for those who need strength, and an 
anodyne for those who require soothing, and a 
febrifuge for those who want their blood cooled ; 
a filling up for minds pumped dry, a breviary for 
the superstitious with endless matins and vespers, 
and to the Christian an apocalyptic vision where 
the morning sun gilds the waters, and there is 
spread before him "a sea of glass mingled with 
fire." "Thy way, O God, is in the sea, and thy 
path in the great waters !" 



<z& 



¥ 



CHAPTER LXI. 

HARD SHELL CONSIDERATIONS. 

THE plumage of the robin redbreast, the mot- 
tled sides of the Saranac trout, the upholstery 
of a spider's web, the waist of the wasp fashion- 
ably small without tight lacing, the lustrous eye of 
the gazelle, the ganglia of the star-fish, have been 
discoursed upon ; but it is left to us, fagged out 
from a long ramble, to sit down on a log and cele- 
brate the admirable qualities of a turtle. We refer 
not to the curious architecture of its house — ribbed, 
plated, jointed, carapace and plastron divinely 
fashioned — but to its instincts, worthy almost of 
being called mental and moral qualities. 

The tortoise is wiser than many people we wot 
of, in the fact that he knows when to keep his head 
in his shell. No sooner did we just now appear 
on the edge of the wood than this animal of the 
order Testudinata modestly withdrew. He knew 
he was no match for us. But how many of the 
human race are in the habit of projecting their 
heads into things for which they have no fittedness ! 
They thrust themselves into discussions where they 
are almost sure to get trod on. They will dispute 

356 



HARD SHELL CONSIDERATIONS. 357 

about vertebrae with Cuvier, or metaphysics with 
William Hamilton, or paintings with Ruskin, or 
medicine with Doctor Rush, and attempt to sting 
Professor Jaeger to death with his own insects. 
The first and last important lesson for such per- 
sons to learn is, like this animal at our foot, to 
shut up their shell. If they could see how, in the 
case of this roadside tortoise, at our appearance 
the carapace suddenly came down on the plastron, 
or, in other words, how the upper bone snapped 
against the lower bone, they might become as wise 
as this reptile. 

We admire also the turtle's capacity of being at 
home everywhere. He carries with him his parlor, 
nursery, kitchen, bed-chamber and bath-room. 
Would that we all had an equal faculty of do- 
mestication ! In such a beautiful world, and with 
so many comfortable surroundings, we ought to 
feel at home in any place we are called to be. 
While we cannot, like the tortoise, carry our house 
on our back, we are better off than he, for by the 
right culture of a contented spirit we may make 
the sky itself the mottled shell of our residence, 
and the horizon all around us shall be the place 
where the carapace shuts down on the plastron. 

We admire still more the tortoise's determina- 
tion to right itself. By way of experiment, turn it 
upside down, and then go off a piece to see it re- 

29 



35 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

gain its position. Now, there is nothing when put 
upon its back which has such little prospect of 
getting to its feet again as this animal. It has no 
hands to push with and nothing against which to 
brace its feet, and one would think that a turtle 
once upside down would be upside down for ever. 
But put on its back, it keeps on scrabbling till it is 
right side up. We would like to pick up this 
animal from the dust and put it down on Broad- 
way, if men passing by would learn from it never 
to stop exertion, even when overthrown. You 
cannot by commercial disasters be more thor- 
oughly flat on your back than five minutes ago 
was this poor thing ; but see it yonder nimbly 
making for the bushes. Vanderbilt or Jay Gould 
may treat you as we did the tortoise a few mo- 
ments ago. But do not lie still, discouraged. 
Make an effort to get up. Throw your feet out, 
first in one direction and then in another. Scrabble ! 
We find from this day's roadside observation 
that the turtle uses its head before it does its feet: 
in other words, it looks around before it moves. 
You never catch a turtle doing anything without 
previous careful inspection. We would, all of us, 
do better if we always looked before we leaped. 
It is easier to get into trouble than to get out. 
Better have goods weighed before we buy them. 
Better know where a road comes out before we 



HARD SHELL CONSIDERATIONS. 359 

start on it. We caught one hundred flies in our 
sitting-room yesterday because they sacrificed all 
their caution to a love of molasses. Better use 
your brain before you do your hands and feet. 
Before starting, the turtle always sticks its head 
out of its shell. 

But tortoises die. They sometimes last two 
hundred years. We read that one of them out- 
lived seven bishops. They have a quiet life and 
no wear and tear upon their nervous system. Yet 
they, after a while, notwithstanding all their slow 
travel, reach the end of their journey. For the 
last time they draw their head inside their shell 
and shut out the world for ever. But notwith- 
standing the useful thoughts they suggest while 
living, they are of still more worth when dead. 
We fashion their bodies into soup and their cara- 
pace into combs for the hair, and tinged drops for 
the ear, and bracelets for the wrist. One of Del- 
monico's soup tureens is waiting for the hero we 
celebrate, and Tiffany for his eight plates of bone. 
Will we be as useful after we are dead ? Some 
men are thrown aside like a turtle-shell crushed 
by a cart-wheel ; but others, by deeds done or 
words spoken, are useful long after they quit life, 
their example an encouragement, their memory a 
banquet. He who helps build an asylum or gives 
healthful and cultured starting to a young man 



;-:: AR CIWZ THE 7ZA-7A51I 

may twenty years after his decease c: doin^r mere 
for the world than during his residence upon it. 
Stephen Girard and George Peabody are of mere 
use to the race than when Philadelphia and London 

saw them. 

But we must get up on this log. for the ants 
are crawling over us. and the bull- fro ^s croak as 
though the night were coming on. The evening 
star hangs its lantern at the door of the night fee 
light the tired dav to rest. The wild roses in the 
thicket are breathing vespers at an altar cushioned 
with moss, while the fire-rlies are kindling their 
dim lamps in the cathedral of the woods. The 



evening dew on strings o: lem is counting" its beads 



in z raver. The "Whip-:: : : r-will takes up its notes 
of complaint. making us wonder on :ur way home 
what Will it was that in boyhood maltreated the 
ancestors of this species :■:" hirds -.vheth _-r 7. hham 
Wordsworth, or William Cowper, or William Shak- 
speare, so that the feathered d-rs:en:;ants .<--:; 
through all the forests. vear after vear. demanding 
for the cruel perpetrator a sound threshing, for- 
getting the Bryant that praised them and the Ten- 
nyson that petted them and the Jean Ingelow who 
throws them crumbs, in their anxiety to have some 
one whip poor Will. 



CHAPTER LXII. 

WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZLE. 

WE had muffins that night. Indeed, we always 
had either muffins or waffles when Gov- 
ernor Wiseman was at tea. The reason for this 
choice of food was that a muffin or a waffle seemed 
just suited to the size of Wiseman's paragraphs 
of conversation. In other words, a muffin lasted 
him about as long as any one subject of discourse ; 
and when the muffin was done, the subject was 
done. 

We never knew why he was called governor, 
for he certainly never ruled over any State, but 
perhaps it was his wise look that got him the 
name. He never laughed ; had his round spec- 
tacles far down on the end of his nose, so that he 
could see as far into his plate as any man that 
ever sat at our tea-table. When he talked, the 
conversation was all on his side. He considered 
himself oracular on most subjects. You had but 
to ask him a question, and without lifting his head, 
his eye vibrating from fork to muffin, he would go 
on till he had said all he knew on that theme. We 
did not invite him to our house more than once in 

29* 361 



362 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

about three months, for too much of a good thing 
is a bad thing. 

At the same sitting we always had our young 
friend Fred Quizzle. He did not know much, but 
he was mighty in asking questions. So when we 
had Governor Wiseman, the well, we had Quizzle, 
the pump. 

Fred was long and thin and jerky, and you 
never knew just where he would put his foot. 
Indeed, he was not certain himself. He was thor- 
oughly illogical, and the question he asked would 
sometimes seem quite foreign to the subject being 
discoursed upon. His legs were crooked and re- 
minded you of interrogation points, and his arms 
were interrogations, and his neck was an interro- 
gation, while his eyes had a very inquisitive look. 

Fred Quizzle did not talk until over two years 
of age, notwithstanding all his parents' exertions 
toward getting him to say "papa" and "mamma." 
After his parents had made up their minds that he 
would never talk at all, he one day rose from his 
block houses, looked into his father's eyes, and 
cried out, " How?" as if inquiring in what manner 
he had found his way into this world. His parent, 
outraged at the child's choice of an adverb for his 
first expression instead of a noun masculine or a 
noun feminine indicative of filial affection, pro- 
ceeded to chastise the youngster, when Fred 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZLE. 363 

Quizzle cried out for his second word, "Why?" 
as though inquiring the cause of such hasty 
punishment. 

This early propensity for asking questions grew 
on him till at twenty-three years of age he was a 
prodigy in this respect. So when we had Gov- 
ernor Wiseman we also had Fred Quizzle, the 
former to discourse, the latter to start him and 
keep him going. 

Doctor Heavyasbricks was generally present at 
the same interview. We took the doctor as a sort 
of sedative. After a season of hard work and 
nervous excitement, Doctor Heavyasbricks had a 
quieting influence upon us. There was no light- 
ning in his disposition. He was a great laugher, 
but never at any recent merriment. It took a 
long while for him to understand a joke. Indeed, 
if it were subtle or elaborate, he never understood 
it. But give the doctor, when in good health, a 
plain pun or repartee, and let him have a day or 
two to think over it, and he would come in with 
uproarious merriment that wellnigh would choke 
him to death, if the paroxysm happened to take 
him with his mouth full of muffins. 

When at our table, the time not positively oc- 
cupied in mastication he employed in looking first 
at Quizzle, the interlocutor, and then at Governor 
Wiseman, the responding oracle. 



364 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Quizzle. — How have you, Governor Wiseman, 
kept yourself in such robust health so long a 
time? 

Wiseman. — By never trifling with it, sir. I never 
eat muffins too hot. This one, you see, has had 
some time to cool. Besides, when I am at all dis- 
ordered, I immediately send for the doctor. 

There are books proposing that we all become 
our own medical attendant. Whenever we are 
seized with any sort of physical disorder, we are 
to take down some volume in homeopathy, allop- 
athy, hydropathy, and running our finger along 
the index, alight upon the malady that may be 
afflicting us. We shall find in the same page the 
name of the disease and the remedy. Thus: 
chapped hands — glycerine; cold — squills; lumbago 
— mustard-plasters; nervous excitement — valerian; 
sleeplessness — Dover's powders. 

This may be very well for slight ailments, but 
we have attended more funerals of people who 
were their own doctor than obsequies of any other 
sort. In your inexperience you will be apt to get 
the wrong remedy. Look out for the agriculturist 
who farms by book, neglecting the counsel of his 
long-experienced neighbors. He will have poor 
turnips and starveling wheat, and kill his fields 
with undue apportionments of guano and bone- 
dust. Look out just as much for the patient who 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZLE. 365 

in the worship of some " pathy " blindly adheres 
to a favorite hygienic volume, rejecting in im- 
portant cases medical admonition. 

In ordinary cases the best doctor you can have 
is mother or grandmother, who has piloted through 
the rocks of infantile disease a whole family. She 
has salve for almost everything, and knows how 
to bind a wound or cool an inflammation. But if 
mother be dead or you are afflicted with a mater- 
nal ancestor that never knew anything practical, 
and never will, better in severe cases have the 
doctor right away. You say that it is expensive to 
do that, while a book on the treatment of diseases 
will cost you only a dollar and a half. I reply that 
in the end it is very expensive for an inexperienced 
man to be his own doctor ; for in addition to the 
price of the book there are the undertaker's ex- 
penses. 

Some of the younger persons at the table 
laughed at the closing sentence of Wiseman, when 
Doctor Heavyasbricks looked up, put down his 
knife and said: "My young friends, what are 
you laughing at? I see no cause of merriment in 
the phrase ' undertaker's expenses.' It seems to 
me to be a sad business. When I think of the 
scenes amid which an undertaker moves, I feel 
more like tears than hilarity." 

Quizzle. — If you are opposed, Governor Wise- 



366 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

man. to one's being his own doctor, what do you 
think of every man's bein^ his own lawyer? 

Wiseman. — I think just as badly of that. 

Books setting forth forms for deeds, mort^a^es, 
notes, and contracts, are no doubt valuable. It 
should be a part of even* young man's education 
to know something of these. We cannot for the 
small business transactions of life be hunting up 
the " attorney-at-law '' or the village squire. But 
economy in the transfer of property or in the mak- 
ing of wills is sometimes a permanent disaster. 
There are so many quirks in the law, so many hid- 
ing-places for scamps, so many modes of twisting 
phraseology, so many decisions, precedents and 
rulings, so many John Does who have, brought 
suits against Richard Roes, that you had better 
in all important business matters seek out an 
honest lawyer. 

"There are none such!" cries out Ouizzle. 

Why, where have you lived? There are as 
many honest men in the legal profession as in any 
other, and rogues more than enough in all profes- 
sions. Many a farmer, ^oin^ down to attend 
court in the county-seat, takes a load of produce 
to the market, carefully putting the specked apples 
at the bottom of the barrel, and hiding amonof the 
fresh ones the e&a which some discouraged hen 



•£>£> 



after five weeks of "setting ' had abandoned, and 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZLE. 367 

having secured the sale of his produce and lost his 
suit in the " Court of Common Pleas," has come 
home denouncing the scoundrelism of attorneys. 

You shall find plenty of honest lawyers if you 
really need them ; and in matters involving large 
interests you had better employ them. 

Especially avoid the mistake of making your own 
"last will and testament" unless you have great 
legal skillfulness. Better leave no will at all than 
one inefficiently constructed. The " Orphans' 
Court " could tell many a tragedy of property dis- 
tributed adverse to the intention of the testator. 
You save twenty to a hundred dollars from your 
counsel by writing your own will, and your heirs 
pay ten .thousand dollars to lawyers in disputes 
over it. Perhaps those whom you have wished 
especially to favor will get the least of your es- 
tate, and a relative against whom you always had 
especial dislike will get the most, and your chari- 
ties will be apportioned differently from what 
you anticipated — a hundred dollars to the Bible 
Society, and three thousand to the "hook and 
ladder company," 

Quizzle. — Do you not think, governor (to go 
back to the subject from which we wandered), that 
your good spirits have had much to do with your 
good health ? 

Wiseman. — No doubt. I see no reason why, 



368 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

because I am advancing in years, I should become 
melancholy. 

One of the heartiest things I have seen of late 
is the letter of Rev. Dr. Dowling as he retires 
from active work in the ministry. He hands over 
his work to the younger brethren without sigh, or 
groan, or regret. He sees the sun is quite far 
down in the west, and he feels like hanging up his 
scythe in the first apple tree he comes to. Our 
opinion is that he has made a little mistake in the 
time of day, and that while he thinks it is about 
half-past five in the afternoon, it is only about 
three. I guess his watch is out of order, and that 
he has been led to think it later than it really is. 
But when we remember how much good he has 
done, we will not begrudge him his rest either 
here or hereafter. 

At any rate, taking the doctor's cheerful vale- 
dictory for a text, I might preach a little bit of a 
sermon on the best way of getting old. Do not 
be fretted because you have to come to spectacles. 
While glasses look premature on a young man's 
nose, they are an adornment on an octogenarian's 
face. Besides that, when your eyesight is poor, 
you miss seeing a great many unpleasant things 
that youngsters are obliged to look at. 

Do not be worried because your ear is becom- 
ing dull. In that way you escape being bored 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASB RICKS AND QUIZZLE. 369 

with many of the foolish things that are said. If 
the gates of sound keep out some of the music, 
they also keep out much of the discord. If the 
hair be getting thin, it takes less time to comb it, 
and then it is not all the time falling down over 
your eyes ; or if it be getting white, I think that 
color is quite as respectable as any other: that is 
the color of the snow, and of the blossoms, and 
of the clouds, and of angelic habiliments. 

Do not worry because the time comes on when 
you must go into the next world. It is only a 
better room, with finer pictures, brighter society 
and sweeter music. Robert McCheyne, and John 
Knox, and Harriet Newell, and Mrs. Hemans, and 
John Milton, and Martin Luther will be good 
enough company for the most of us. The corn- 
shocks standing in the fields to-day will not sigh 
dismally when the huskers leap over the fence, 
and throwing their arms around the stack, swing 
it to the ground. It is only to take the golden ear 
from the husk. Death to the aged Christian is 
only husking-time, and then the load goes in from 
the frosts to the garner. 

My congratulations to those who are nearly 
done with the nuisances of this world. Give your 
staff to your little grandson to ride horse on. You 
are going to be young again, and you will have no 
need of crutches. May the clouds around the 

30 



370 " AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

setting sun be golden, and such as to lead the 
" weather-wise " to prophesy a clear morning ! 

Quizzle. — But, Governor Wiseman, does it not 
give you a little uneasiness in this day of so much 
talk about cremation as to what will become of 
your body after you leave this sphere? 

At this point Doctor Heavyasbricks wiped his 
spectacles, as though he could not see well, and 
interrupted the conversation by saying, " Crema- 
tion ! Cremation! What's that?" Sitting at the 
head of the table, I explained that it was the re- 
duction of the deceased human body through fire 
into ashes to be preserved in an urn. " Ah ! ah !" 
said Doctor Heavyasbricks, " I had the idea, from 
the sound of that word 'cremation,' it must be 
something connected with cream. I will take a 
little more of that delicious bovine liquid in my 
tea, if you please," said the doctor as he passed 
his cup toward the urn, adding, to the lady of the 
house, "I hope that urn you have your hand on 
has nothing to do with cremation." This explana- 
tion having been made, Governor Wiseman pro- 
ceeded to answer the question of Quizzle : 

No ; I have no uneasiness about my body after 
I have left it. The idea you speak of will never 
be carried out. I know that the papers are ar- 
dently discussing whether or not it will be best to 
burn the bodies of the dead, instead of burying 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZLE. 371 

them. Scientific journals contend that our ceme- 
teries are the means of unhealthy exhalations, and 
that cremation is the only safe way of disposing 
of the departed. Some have advocated the chem- 
ical reduction of the physical system. 

I have, as yet, been unable to throw myself into 
a mood sufficiently scientific to appreciate this 
proposal. It seems to me partly horrible and 
partly ludicrous. I think that the dead popula- 
tions of the world are really the most quiet and un- 
harmful. They make no war upon us, and we need 
make no war upon them. I am very certain that 
all the damage we shall ever do this world, will be 
while w T e are animate. It is not the dead people 
that are hard to manage, but the living. Some 
whistle to keep their courage up while going along 
by graveyards ; I whistle while moving among the 
wide awake. Before attempting this barbaric dis- 
posal of the human form as a sanitary improve- 
ment, it would be better to clear the streets and 
"commons" of our cities of their pestiferous sur- 
roundings. Try your cremation on the dogs and 
cats with extinct animation. 

We think Greenwood is healthier than Broad- 
way, and Laurel Hill than Chestnut street, Pere la 
Chaise than Champs Elysees. Urns, with ashes 
scientifically prepared, may look very well in Mad- 
ras or Pekin, but not in a Christian country. Not 



372 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

having been able to shake off the Bible notions 
about Christian burial, we adhere to the mode that 
was observed when devout men carried Stephen 
to his burial. Better not come around here with 
your chemical apparatus for the reduction of the 
human body. I give fair warning that if your 
philosopher attempts such a process on my bones, 
and I am of the same way of thinking as now, he 
will be sorry for it. 

But I have no fear that I shall thus be desecrated 
by my surviving friends. I have more fear of 
epitaphs. I do not wonder that people have 
sometimes dictated the inscription on their own 
tombstones when I see what inappropriate lines 
are chiseled on many a slab. There needs to be 
a reformation in epitaphiology. 

People often ask me for appropriate inscriptions 
for the graves of their dead. They tell the virtues 
of the father, or wife, or child, and want me to put 
in compressed shape all that catalogue of excel- 
lences. 

Of course I fail in the attempt. The story of a 
lifetime cannot be chiseled by the stone-cutter on 
the side of a marble slab. But it is not a rare 
thing to go a few months after by the sacred spot 
and find that the bereft friends, unable to get from 
others an epitaph sufficiently eulogistic, have put 
their own brain and heart to work and composed 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASBRICKS AND QUIZZEE. 373 

a rhyme. Now, the most unfit sphere on earth 
for an inexperienced mind to exercise the poetic 
faculty is in epitaphiology. It does very well in 
copy-books, but it is most unfair to blot the resting- 
place of the dead with unskilled poetic scribble. 
It seems to me that the owners of cemeteries and 
graveyards should keep in their own hand the right 
to refuse inappropriate and ludicrous epitaph. 

Nine-tenths of those who think they can write 
respectable poetry are mistaken. I do not say 
that poesy has passed from the earth, but it does 
seem as if the fountain Hippocrene had been 
drained off to run a saw-mill. It is safe to say 
that most of the home-made poetry of graveyards 
is an offence to God and man. 

One would have thought that the New Hamp- 
shire village would have risen in mob to prevent 
the inscription that was really placed on one of its 
tombstones descriptive of a man who had lost his 
life at the foot of a vicious mare on the way to 
brook : 

"As this man was leading her to drink 
She kick V and kilPd him quicker '« a wink." 

One would have thought that even conservative 
New Jersey would have been in rebellion at a 
child's epitaph which in a village of that State 
reads thus : 

3')* 



374 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

" She was not smart, she was not fair, 

But hearts with grief for her are swellir? ; 
All empty stands her little chair : 
She died of eatirt watermelon." 

Let not such discretions be allowed in hallowed 
places. Let not poetizers practice on the tomb- 
stone. My uniform advice to all those who want 
acceptable and suggestive epitaph is, Take a pas- 
sage of Scripture. That will never wear out. 
From generation to generation it will bring down 
upon all visitors a holy hush ; and if before that 
stone has crumbled the day comes for waking up 
of all the graveyard sleepers, the very words chis- 
eled on the marble may be the ones that shall 
ring from the trumpet of the archangel. 

While the governor was buttering another 
muffin, and, according to the dietetic principle a 
little while ago announced, allowing it sufficiently 
to cool off, he continued the subject already opened 
by saying : I keep well by allowing hardly anything 
to trouble me, and by looking on the bright side of 
everything. One half of the people fret themselves 
to death. 

Four months ago the air was full of evil proph- 
ecies. If a man believed one half he saw in the 
newspapers, he must have felt that this world was 
a failure, not paying more than ten cents on a 
dollar. To one good prophet like Isaiah or Eze- 



WISEMAN, HEAVYASB RICKS AND QUIZZEE. 375 

kiel we had a thousand Balaams, each mounted on 
his appropriate nag. 

First came the fearful announcement that in 
consequence of the financial depression we would 
have bread- riots innumerable and great slaughter. 
But where have been your riots? There was here 
and there a swinging of shillalahs, and a few 
broken heads which would probably have got 
broken anyhow ; but the men who made the dis- 
turbance were found to be lounging vagabonds 
who never worked even when they had a chance. 

Prophecy was also made that there would be a 
general starvation. We do not believe that in the 
United States there have been twenty sober peo- 
ple famished in the last year. Aware of the un- 
usual stress upon the poor, the hand of charity 
has been more active and full than ever ; and 
though many have been denied their accustomed 
luxuries, there has been bread for all. 

Weather prophets also promised us a winter of 
unusual severity. They knew it from the amount 
of investment the squirrels had made in winter 
stock, and from the superabundance of wool on 
the sheep's back, and the lavishness of the dog's 
hair. Are the liars ready to confess their fault ? 
The boys have found but little chance to use their 
skates, and I think the sheep-shearing of the flocks 
on celestial pasture-fields must have been omitted, 



376 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

judging from the small amount of snowy fleece 
that has fallen through the air. I have not had on 
my big mittens but once or twice, and my long-ago 
frost-bitten left ear has not demanded an extra 
pinching. To make up for the lack of fuel on the 
hearth, the great brass handiron of the sun has 
been kept unusually bright and hot. And yes- 
terday we heard the horn of the south wind telling 
that the flowery bands of spring are on the way 
up from Florida. 

The necessity for retrenchment has blessed the 
whole land. Many of us have learned how to 
make a thousand dollars do what fifteen hundred 
dollars — 

Quizzle broke in at the first opportunity and 
said, " No doubt, governor, it is easy for you to 
be placid, for everything has gone well with you 
since you started life, whereas my mother died 
when I was little, and I was kicked and cuffed 
about by a step-mother whose name I cannot bear 
to hear." 

Ha ! ha ! said Governor Wiseman. It is the 
old story of step-mothers. I don't believe they 
are any worse than other people, taking the aver- 
age. I have often wondered why it is that the 
novels and romances always make the step-mother 
turn out so very badly. She always dresses too 
much and bano-s the children. The authors, if 



WISEMAN, HEAVY A SB RICKS AND QUIZZLE. 377 

writing out of their own experience, must have 
had a very hard time. 

In society it has become a proverb : " Cruel as a 
step-mother." I am disposed, however, to think 
that, while there may be marked exceptions, step- 
mothers are the most self-sacrificing beings in all 
the world. They come into the family scrutinized 
by the household and the relatives of the one who 
used to occupy the motherly position. Neighborly 
busybodies meet the children on the street and 
sigh over them and ask them how their new 
mother treats them. The wardrobe of the young- 
sters comes under the severe inspection of out- 
siders. 

The child, having been taught that the lady of 
the household is " nothing but a step-mother," 
screams at the least chastisement, knowing that 
the neighbor's window is up and this will be a good 
way of making publication. That is called cruelty 
which is only a most reasonable, moderate and 
Christian spanking. What a job she has in navi- 
gating a whole nursery of somebody else's chil- 
dren through mumps, measles, whooping-cough, 
and chicken-pox ! One of the things that I rejoice 
over in life is that it is impossible that I ever be- 
come a step-mother. In many cases she has the 
largest possible toil for the least reward. 

Blessed be the Lord who setteth the solitary in 



378 



AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 



families that there are glorious exceptions ! The 
new mother comes to the new home, and the chil- 
dren gather the first day around her as the natural 
protector. They never know the difference be- 
tween the first and second mother. They seem 
like two verses of the same hymn, two days of the 
same summer, two strokes of the same bell, two 
blessings from the same God. 

She is watchful all night long over the sick little 
one, bathing the brow and banishing the scare of 
the feverish dream. After a while those children 
will rise up to do her honor ; and when her work 
is done, she will go up to get the large reward that 
awaits a faithful, great-hearted Christian step- 
mother in the land where the neighbors all mind 
their own business. 




CHAPTER LXIII. 

A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 

SEVERAL months had passed along since we 
had enjoyed the society of Governor Wise- 
man, Doctor Heavyasbricks and Fred Quizzle. 
At our especial call they had come again. 

The evening air was redolent with waffles baked 
in irons that had given them the square imprint 
which has come down through the ages as the 
only orthodox pattern. 

No sooner had our friends seated themselves at 
the tea-table than — 

Quizzle began : I see, Governor Wiseman, that 
the races have just come off in England. What 
do you think of horse-racing? 

Wiseman. — That has become a very important 
question for every moralist to answer. I see that 
last week England took carriage and horses and 
went out to Epsom Downs to see the Derby races. 
The race was won by Sir George Frederick ; that 
is the name of the successful horse. All the par- 
ticulars come by telegraph. There is much now 
being done for the turf in this country as well as 

379 



3 SO AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

in England, and these horses are improved year 
by year. I wonder if the race of men who fre- 
quent these entertainments are as much improved 
as the horses ? I like horses very much, but I like 
men better. So far as we can judge, the horses 
are getting the best part of these exercises, for 
they never bet, and always come home sober. If 
the horses continue to come up as much as they 
have, and our sporting friends continue to go 
down in the same ratio, by an inevitable law of 
progression we shall after a while have two men 
going round the course neck and neck, while Dex- 
ter and Sir George Frederick are on the judges' 
stand deciding which man is the winner. 

Quizzle. — But do you not, Governor Wiseman, 
believe in out-door sports and recreations ? 

Yes, said the governor, but it ought to be some- 
thing that helps a man as well as the brute. I pre- 
fer those recreations that are ^ood both for a 
man's body and soul. We want our entire nature 
developed. 

Two thousand people the other day waited at 
the depot in Albany for the arrival of the remains 
of the great pugilist, Heenan. Then they covered 
the coffin with immortelles. Xo wonder they felt 
badly. The poor fellow's work was done. He 
had broken the last nose. He had knocked out 
the last tooth. He had bunged up the last eye. 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 38 1 

He had at last himself thrown up the sponge. 
The dead hero belonged to the aristocracy of 
hard-hitters. If I remember rightly, he drew the 
first blood in the conflict with one who afterward 
became one of the rulers of the nation — the Hon- 
orable John Morrissey, member of Congress of the 
United States and chief gambler at Saratoga. 

There is just now an attempt at the glorification 
of muscle. The man who can row the swiftest, or 
strike a ball the farthest, or drop the strongest 
wrestler is coming to be of more importance. 
Strong muscle is a grand thing to have, but every- 
thing depends on how you use it. If Heenan had 
become a Christian, he would have made a capital 
professor in Polemic Theology. If the Harvard 
or Yale student shall come in from the boat-race 
and apply his athletic strength to rowing the world 
out of the breakers, we say "All hail !" to him. 
The more physical force a man has, the better ; but 
if Samson finds nothing more useful to do than 
carrying off gate-posts, his strong muscle is only a 
nuisance. 

By all means let us culture physical energy. 
Let there be more gymnasiums in our colleges and 
theological seminaries. Let the student know how 
to wield oar and bat, and in good boyish wrestle 
see who is the strongest. The health of mental 
and spiritual work often depends on physical 

31 



382 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

health. If I were not opposed to betting, I would 
lay a wager that I can tell from the book column 
in any of the newspapers or magazines of the land 
the condition of each critic's liver and spleen at 
the time of his writing. 

A very prominent- literary man apologized to me 
the other day for his merciless attack on one of 
my books, saying that he felt miserable that morn- 
ing and must pitch into something ; and my book 
being the first one on the table, he pitched into that. 
Our health decides our style of work. If this 
world is to be taken for God, we want more sancti- 
fied muscle. The man who comes to his Christian 
work having had sound sleep the night before, and 
the result of roast beef rare in his organism, can 
do almost anything. Luther was not obliged to 
nurse his appetite with any plantation bitters, but 
was ready for the coarsest diet, even the " Diet 
of Worms." 

But while I advocate all sports, and exercises, 
and modes of life that improve the physical organ- 
ism, I have no respect for bone, and nerve, and 
muscle in the abstract. Health is a fine harp, but 
I want to know what tune you are going to play 
on it. I have not one daisy to put on the grave 
of a dead pugilist or mere boat-racer, but all the 
garlands I can twist for the tomb of the man who 
serves God, though he be as physically weak as 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 383 

Richard Baxter, whose ailments were almost as 
many as his books, and they numbered forty. 

At this last sentence the company at the table, 
forgetful of the presence of Doctor Heavyasbricks, 
showed some disposition at good humor, when the 
doctor's brows lifted in surprise, and he observed 
that he thought a man with forty ailments was 
a painful spectacle, and ought to be calculated to 
depress a tea-table rather than exhilarate it. 

" But, Governor Wiseman," said Quizzle, " do 
you not think that it is possible to combine physi- 
cal, mental and spiritual recreations ?" 

Oh yes, replied the governor; I like this new 
mode of mingling religion with summer pleasures. 
Soon the Methodists will be shaking out their tents 
and packing their lunch-baskets and buying their 
railroad and steamboat tickets for the camp-meet- 
ing grounds. Martha's Vineyard, Round Lake, 
Ocean Grove and Sea Cliff will soon mingle 
psalms and prayers with the voice of surf and 
forest. 

Rev. Doctor J. H. Vincent, the silver trumpet 
of Sabbath-schoolism, is marshaling a meeting for 
the banks of Chautauqua Lake which will probably 
be the grandest religious picnic ever held since 
the five thousand sat down on the grass and had 
a surplus of provision to take home to those who 
were too stupid to go. From the arrangement 



384 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

being made for that meeting in August, I judge 
there will be so much consecrated enthusiasm that 
there may be danger that some morning, as the 
sun strikes gloriously through the ascending mist 
of Chautauqua Lake, our friends may all go up in 
a chariot of fire, leaving our Sunday-schools in a 
bereft condition. If they do go up in that way, 
may their mantle or their straw hat fall this way ! 

Why not have all our churches and denomina- 
tions take a summer airing ? The breath of the 
pine woods or a wrestle with the waters would put 
an end to everything like morbid religion. One 
reason why the apostles had such healthy theology 
is that they went a-fishing. We would like to see 
the day when we will have Presbyterian camp- 
meetings, and Episcopalian camp-meetings, and 
Baptist camp-meetings, and Congregational camp- 
meetings, or, what would be still better, when, for- 
getful of all minor distinctions, we could have a 
church universal camp-meeting I would like to 
help plant the tent-pole for such a convocation. 

Quizzle. — Do you not think, governor, that there 
are inexpensive modes of recreation which are 
quite as good as those that absorb large means ? 

Yes, said the governor ; we need to cut the coat 
according to our cloth. When I see that the prince 
of Wales is three hundred thousand dollars in 
debt, notwithstanding his enormous income, I am 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 385 

forcibly reminded that it is not the amount of 
money a man gets that makes him well off, but the 
margin between the income and the outgo. The 
young man who while he makes a dollar spends a 
dollar and one cent is on the sure road either to 
bankruptcy or the penitentiary. 

Next to the evil of living beyond one's means 
is that of spending all one's income. There are 
multitudes who are sailing so near shore that a 
slight wind in the wrong direction founders them. 
They get on well while the times are usual and 
the wages promptly paid ; but a panic or a short 
period of sickness, and they drop helpless. Many 
a father has gone with his family in a fine carriage 
drawn by a spanking team till he came up to his 
grave ; then he lay down, and his children have 
got out of the carriage, and not only been com- 
pelled to walk, but to go barefoot. Against par- 
simony and niggardliness I proclaim war ; but 
with the same sentence I condemn those who 
make a grand splash while they live, leaving their 
families in destitution when they die. 

Quizzle. — Where, governor, do you expect to 
recreate this coming summer? 

Wiseman. — Have not yet made up my mind. 
The question is coming up in all our households 
as to the best mode of vacation. We shall all 
need rest. The first thing to do is to measure the 

31* 



3^6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

length of your purse ; you cannot make a short 
purse reach around Saratoga and the White Moun- 
tains. There may be as much health, good cheer 
and recuperation in a country farmhouse where 
the cows come up every night and yield milk 
without any chalk in it. 

What the people of our cities need is quiet. 
What the people of the country need is sight- 
seeing. Let the mountains come to New York 
and New York go to the mountains. The nearest 
I ever get to heaven in this world is lying flat 
down on my back under a tree, looking up through 
the branches, five miles off from a post-office or a 
telegraph station. But this would be torture to 
others. 

Independent of what others do or say, let us in 
the selection of summer recreations study our own 
temperament and finances. It does not pay to 
spend so much money in July and August that 
you have to go pinched and half mad the rest of 
the year. The healthiest recreations do not cost 
much. In boyhood, with a string and a crooked 
pin attached to it, I fished up more fun from the 
mill-pond than last summer with a five-dollar ap- 
paratus I caught among the Franconia Mountains. 

There is a great area of enjoyment within the 
circumference of one dollar if you only know how 
to make the circuit. More depends upon our- 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 387 

selves than upon the affluence of our surround- 
ings. If you are compelled to stay home all sum- 
mer, you may be as happy as though you went 
away. The enjoyment of the first of July, when I 
go off, is surpassed by nothing but the first of 
September, when I come home. 

There being a slight pause in the conversation, 
Doctor Heavyasbricks woke gradually up and be- 
gan to move his lips and to show strong symptoms 
of intention to ask for himself a question. He 
said: I have been attending the anniversaries in 
New York, and find that they are about dead. 
Wiseman, can you tell me what killed them ? 

Governor Wiseman replied: It is a great pity 
that the anniversaries are dead. They once lived 
a robust life, but began some fifteen years ago to 
languish, and have finally expired. To the appro- 
priate question, What killed them? I answer, 
Peregrination was one of the causes. There never 
has been any such place for the anniversaries 
as the Broadway Tabernacle. It was large and 
social and central. When that place was torn 
down, the anniversaries began their travels, Going 
some morning out of the warm sunshine into some 
cathedral-looking place, they got the chills, and 
under the dark stained glass everything looked 
blue. In the afternoon they would enter some 
great square hall where everything was formal. 



388 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

It is almost impossible to have a genial and 
successful meeting in a square hall. When in 
former days the country pastor said to his congre- 
gation " Meet me at the New York anniversaries," 
they all knew where to go ; but after the old Broad- 
way Tabernacle went down, the aforesaid congre- 
gation might have looked in five or six places and 
not found their minister. The New York anni- 
versaries died on the street between the old 
Tabernacle and St. Paul's Methodist Cathedral. 

Prolix reports also helped to kill the patient. 
Nothing" which was not in its nature immortal 
could have survived these. The secretary would 
read till he got out of wind, and would then say 
that the remainder of the report would be found 
in the printed copies in the pews. The speakers 
following had the burden of galvanizing an ex- 
hausted meeting, and the Christian man who at- 
tended the anniversary on retiring that evening 
had the nightmare in the shape of a portly secre- 
tary sitting astride his chest reading from a huge 
scroll of documents. 

Diluted Christian oratory also helped to kill the 
anniversaries. The men whom we heard in our 
boyhood on the Broadway platform believed in a 
whole Bible, and felt that if the gospel did not save 
the world nothing ever would ; consequently, they 
spoke in blood-red earnestness and made the 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 389 

place quake with their enthusiasm. There came 
afterward a weak-kneed stock of ministers who 
thought that part of the Bible was true, if they 
were not very much mistaken, and that, on the 
whole, religion was a good thing for most people, 
certainly if they had weak constitutions, and that 
man could be easily saved if we could get the 
phrenologist to fix up his head, and the gymnasium 
to develop his muscle, and the minister to coax him 
out of his indiscretions. Well, the anniversaries 
could not live on pap and confectionery, and so 
they died for lack of strong meat. 

But the day of resurrection will come. Mark 
that ! The tide of Bible evangelism will come up 
again. We may be dead, but our children will 
see it. New York will be thronged with men and 
women who will come up once a year to count the 
sheaves of harvest, and in some great building 
thronged from the platform to the vestibule an 
aroused Christian audience will applaud the news, 
just received by telegraph, of a nation born in a 
day, and sing with more power than when Thomas 
Hastings used to act as precentor : 

" The year of jubilee has come ; 
Return, ye ransomed sinners, home." 

Quizzle. — You speak, governor, of the ruinous 
effect of prolixity in religious service. How long 
ought a public service continue ? 



39° AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Wiseman. — There is much discussion in the pa- 
pers as to how long or short sermons and prayers 
ought to be. Some say a discourse ought to last 
thirty minutes, and others forty, and others an hour, 
and prayers should be three minutes long, or five, 
or fifteen. You might as well discuss how long 
a frock-coat ought to be, or how many ounces of 
food a man ought to eat. In the one case, every- 
thing depends upon the man's size ; in the other, 
everything on the capacity of his stomach. A 
sermon or a prayer ought to go on as long as it is 
of any profit. If it is doing no good, the sermon 
is half an hour too long, though it take only thirty 
minutes. If the audience cough, or fidget, or 
shuffle their feet, you had better stop praying. 
There is no excuse for a man's talking or praying 
too long if he have good eyesight and hearing. 

But suppose a man have his sermon written 
and before him. You say he must go through 
with it ? Oh no. Let him skip a few leaves. Bet- 
ter sacrifice three or four sheets of sermon-paper 
than sacrifice the interest of your hearers. But 
it is a silly thing for a man in a prayer-meeting or 
pulpit to stop merely because a certain number of 
minutes have expired while the interest is deepen- 
ing — absurd as a hunter on track of a roebuck, 
and within two minutes of bringing down its ant- 
lers, stopping because his wife said that at six 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 39 1 

o'clock precisely he must be home to supper. 
Keep on hunting till your ammunition gives out. 

Still, we must all admit that the danger is on the 
side of prolixity. The most interesting prayers 
we ever hear are by new converts, who say every- 
thing they have to say and break down in one 
minute. There are men who, from the way they 
begin their supplications, indicate a long siege. 
They first pray you into a good frame, and then 
pray you out. They take literally what Paul 
meant to be figurative : " Pray without ceasing." 

Quizzle. — I see there was no lack of interest 
when the brewers' convention met the other day 
in Boston, and that in their longest session the 
attention did not flag. 

Wiseman. — Yes ; I see that speeches were made 
on the beneficial use of fermented liquors. The 
announcement was made that during the year 
8,910,823 barrels of the precious stuff had been 
manufactured. I suppose that while the conven- 
tion was there Boston must have smelt like one 
great ale-pitcher. The delegates were invited to 
visit the suburbs of the city. Strange that no- 
body thought of inviting them to visit the ceme- 
teries and graveyards, especially the potter's field, 
where thousands of their victims are buried. Per- 
haps you are in sympathy with these brewers, and 
say that if people would take beer instead of alco- 



39 2 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

hoi drunkenness would cease. But for the vast 
majority who drink, beer is only introductory to 
something stronger. It is only one carriage in 
the same funeral. Do not spell it b-e-e-r, but spell 
it b-i-e-r. May the lightnings of heaven strike 
and consume all the breweries from river Penob- 
scot to the Golden Horn ! 

Quizzle. — I see, governor, that you were last 
week in Washington. How do things look there? 

Wiseman, — Very well. The general appearance 
of our national capital never changes. It is al- 
ways just as far from the Senate-chamber to the 
White House ; indeed, so far that many of our 
great men have never been able to travel it. 
There are the usual number of petitioners for 
governmental patronage hanging around the hotels 
and the congressional lobbies. They are willing 
to take almost anything they can get, from minis- 
ter to Spain to village postmaster. They come in 
with the same kind of carpet-bags, look stupid 
and anxious for several days, and having borrowed 
money enough from the member from their dis- 
trict to pay their fare, take the cars for home, 
denouncing the administration and the ungrateful- 
ness of republics. 

I think that the two houses of Congress are 
the best and most capable of any almost ever 
assembled. Of course there is a dearth of great 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 393 

men. Only here and there a Senator or Repre- 
sentative you ever before heard of. Indeed, the 
nuisances of our national council in other days 
were the great men who took, in making great 
speeches, the time that ought to have been spent 
in attending to business. We all know that it was 
eight or ten " honorable " bloats of the last thirty 
years who made our chief international troubles. 

Our Congress is made up mostly of practical 
every- day men. They have no speeches to make, 
and no past political reputation to nurse, and no 
national fame to achieve. I like the new crop 
of statesmen better than the old, although it is a 
shorter crop. They do not drink so much rum, 
and not so large a proportion of them will die 
of delirium tremens. They may not have such 
resounding names as some of their predecessors, 
but I prefer a Congress of ordinary men to a group 
of Senators and Representatives overawed and led 
about by five or six overgrown, political Brobding- 
nagians. 

While in Washington we had a startling occur- 
rence. A young man in high society shot another 
young man, who fell dead instantly. 

I wonder that there is not more havoc with 
human life in this day, when it is getting so popu- 
lar to carry firearms. Most of our young men, and 
many of our boys, do not feel themselves in tune 

32 



394 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

unless they have a pistol accompaniment. Men 
are locked up or fined if found with daggers or 
slung-shot upon their persons, but revolvers go 
free. There is not half so much danger from knife 
as pistol. The former may let the victim escape 
minus a good large slice, but the latter is apt to 
drop him dead. On the frontiers, or engaged in 
police duty, firearms may be necessary ; but in the 
ordinary walk of life pistols are, to say the least, a 
superfluity. Better empty your pockets of these 
dangerous weapons, and see that your sons do not 
carry them. In all the ordinary walks of life an 
honest countenance and orderly behavior are suf- 
ficient defence. You had better stop going into 
society where you must always be ready to shoot 
somebody. 

But do not think, my dear Fred, that I am op- 
posed to everything because I have this evening 
spoken against so many different things. I cannot 
take the part of those who pride themselves in 
hurling a stout No against everything. 

A friend called my attention to the fact that San- 
ballat wanted to hold consultation with Nehemiah 
in the plain of O-no. That is the place where more 
people stay, to-day, than in any other. They are 
always protesting, throwing doubt on grand un- 
dertakings; and while you are in the mountain 
of O-yes, they spend their time on the plain of 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 395 

O-no. In the harness of society they are breech- 
ing-straps, good for nothing but to hold back. 

You propose to call a minister. All the indica- 
tions are that he is the right man. Nine-tenths of 
the congregation are united in his favor. The 
matter is put to vote. The vast majority say 
" Aye !" the handful of opponents respond " O 
no!" 

You propose to build a new church. About the 
site, the choice of architect, the upholstery, the 
plumbing and the day of dedication there is al- 
most a unanimity. You hope that the crooked 
sticks will all lie still, and that the congregation 
will move in solid phalanx. But not so. San- 
ballat sends for Nehemiah, proposing to meet him 
in the plain of O-no. 

Some men were born backward, and have been 
going that way ever since. Opposition to every- 
thing has become chronic. The only way they feel 
comfortable is when harnessed with the face to- 
ward the whiffletree and their back to the end of 
the shafts. They may set down their name in the 
hotel register as living in Boston, Chicago, Savan- 
nah or Brooklyn, but they really have been spend- 
ing all their lives on the plain of O-no. There let 
them be buried with their face toward the west, 
for in that way they will lie more comfortably, as 
other people are buried with their face to the east. 



396 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Do not impose upon them by putting them in the 
majority. O no ! 

We rejoice that there seems more liberality 
among good men, and that they have made up 
their minds to let each one work in his own way. 
The scalping-knives are being dulled. 

The cheerfulness and good humor which have 
this year characterized our church courts is re- 
markable and in strong contrast with the old-tirne 
ecclesiastical fights which shook synods and confer- 
ences. Religious controversies always have been 
the most bitter of all controversies ; and when min- 
isters do fight, they fight like vengeance. Once a 
church court visiting a place would not only spend 
much of their own time in sharp contention, but 
would leave the religious community to continue 
the quarrel after adjournment. Now they have a 
time of good cheer while in convention, and leave 
only one dispute behind them among the families, 
and that arising from the fact that each one claims 
it had the best ministers and elders at their house. 
Contention is a child of the darkness, peace the 
daughter of the light. The only help for a cow's 
hollow horn is a gimlet-hole bored through it, and 
the best way to cure religious combatants is to let 
more gospel light through their antlers. 

As we sat at the head of the table interested in 
all that was going on, and saw Governor Wise- 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 397 

man with his honorable name, and Quizzle and 
Heavyasbricks with their unattractive titles, we 
thought of the affliction of an awkward or ill- 
omened name. 

When there are so many pleasant names by 
which children may be called, what right has a 
parent to place on his child's head a disadvantage 
at the start? Worse than the gauntlet of measles 
and whooping-cough and mumps which the little 
ones have to run is this parental outrage. 

What a struggle in life that child will have who 
has been baptized Jedekiah or Mehitabel ! If a 
child is " called after" some one living, let that one 
be past mid-life and of such temperament that 
there shall be no danger of his becoming an ab- 
sconder and a cheat. As far as possible let the 
name given be short, so that in the course of a 
lifetime there be not too many weeks or months 
taken up in the mere act of signature. The 
burdens of life are heavy enough without putting 
upon any one the extra weight of too much no- 
menclature. It is a sad thing when an infant has 
two bachelor uncles, both rich and with outrageous 
names, for the baby will have to take both titles, 
and that is enough to make a case of infant 
mortality. 

Quizzle. — You seem to me, governor, to be 
more sprightly at every interview. 

32* 



39 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Well, that is so, but I do not know how long it 
will last ; . stout people like myself often go the 
quickest. 

There is a constant sympathy expressed by 
robust people for those of slight physical consti- 
tution. I think the sympathy ought to turn in the 
opposite direction. It is the delicate people who 
escape the most fearful disorders, and in three 
cases out of four live the longest. These gigantic 
structures are almost always reckless of health. 
They say, " Nothing hurts me," and so they stand 
in draughts, and go out into the night air to cool off, 
and eat crabs at midnight, and doff their flannels 
in April, and carelessly get their feet wet. 

But the delicate people are shy of peril. They 
know that disease has been fishing for them for 
twenty years, and they keep away from the hook. 
No trout can be caught if he sees the shadow of 
the sportsman on the brook. These people whom 
everybody expects to die, live on most tenaciously. 

I know of a young lady who evidently married 
a very wealthy man of eighty-five years on the 
ground he was very delicate, and with reference to 
her one-third. But the aged invalid is so careful 
of his health, and the young wife so reckless of 
hers, that it is now uncertain whether she will in- 
herit his store-houses or he inherit her wedding- 
rincrs. 



A LAYER OF WAFFLES. 399 

Health and longevity depend more upon caution 
and intelligent management of one's self than 
upon original physical outfit. Paul's advice to the 
sheriff is appropriate to people in all occupations : 
" Do thyself no harm !" 

Besides that, said the governor, I have moved 
and settled in very comfortable quarters since I 
was at this table before. The house I have moved 
in is not a better house, but somehow I feel more 
contented. 

Most of our households are quieted after the 
great annual upsetting. The last carpet is tacked 
down. The strings that were scattered along the 
floor have been rolled up in a ball. We begin to 
know the turns in the stairway. Things are set- 
tling down, and we shall soon feel at home in our 
new residence. If it is a better house than we had, 
do not let us be too proud of the door-plate, nor 
worship too ardently the fine cornice, nor have any 
idea that superb surroundings are going to make 
us any happier than we were in the old house. 

Set not your affections on luxurious upholstery 
and spacious drawing-room. Be grateful and be 
humble 

If the house is not as large nor in as good a 
neighborhood as the one you formerly occupied, 
make the best of it. It is astonishing what a good 
time you may have in a small room. Your pres- 



400 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

ent neighbors are just as kind as those you left, if 
you only knew them. Do not go around your 
house sticking up your nose at the small pantry, 
and the ugly mantel-pieces, and the low ceiling. 
It is a better place than your divine Master occu- 
pied, and to say the least you are no better than 
he. If you are a Christian, you are on your way 
to a King's mansion, and you are now only stop- 
ping a little in the porter's lodge at the gate. Go 
down in the dark lanes of the city and see how 
much poorer off many of your fellow-citizens are. 
If the heart be right, the home will be right. 




CHAPTER LXIV. 

FRIDA V E VENING. 

OUR friend Churchill was a great man for re- 
ligious meetings. As he shoved back from 
our tea-table he said, " I must be off to church." 

Then he yawned as though he expected to have 
a dull time, and asked me why it was that religious 
meetings were often so very insipid and that many 
people went to them merely as a matter of duty. 
Without waiting for me to give my opinion, he 
said he thought that there was a sombre hue given 
to such meetings that was killing, and in a sort 
of soliloquy continued : 

There is one thing Satan does well. He is good 
at stating the discouraging side. He knows how 
to fish for obstacles, and every time brings up his 
net full. Do not let us help him in his work. If 
you have anything to say in prayer-meeting that 
is disheartening, may you forget your speech! 
Tell us something on the bright side. 

I know a Christian man who did something out- 
rageously wrong. Some one said to me: "Why 
do you not expose him?" I replied: "That is the 

401 



402 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

devil's work, and it will be thoroughly done. If 
there is anything good about him, we would rather 
speak of that." 

Give us no sermons or newspaper articles that 
are depressing. We know all that before you 
start; amid the greatest disheartenments there 
are hopeful things that may be said. While the 
Mediterranean corn-ship was going to smash, Paul 
told the crew to " Be of good cheer." We like 
apple trees because, though they are not hand- 
some, they have bright blossoms and good fruit, 
but we despise weeping willows because they 
never do anything but cry. 

On a dark day do not go around closing the 
window-shutters. The world is dark enough with- 
out your making it more so. Is there anybody in 
the room who has a match ? Please then strike it. 
There is only one kind of champagne that we 
temperance folks can take, and that is encouraging 
remark. It is a stimulus, and what makes it better 
than all other kinds of champagne is it leaves no 
headache. 

I said to him, I think religious meetings have 
been improved in the last few years. One of the 
grandest results of the Fulton street prayer-meet- 
ing is the fact that all the devotional services of 
the country have been revolutionized. The tap 
of the bell of that historical prayer-meeting has 



FRIDAY EVENING. 4O3 

shortened the prayers and exhortations of the 
church universal. 

But since it has become the custom to throw 
open the meetings for remark and exhortation, 
there has been a jubilee among the religious bores 
who wander around pestering the churches. We 
have two or three outsiders who come about once 
in six weeks into our prayer-meeting ; and if they 
can get a chance to speak, they damage all the in- 
terest. They talk long and loud in proportion as 
they have nothing to say. They empty on us 
several bushels of "ohs" and "ahs." But they 
seldom get a chance, for we never throw the meet- 
ing open when we see they are there. We make 
such a close hedge of hymns and prayers that 
they cannot break into the garden. 

One of them we are free of because, one night, 
seeing him wiggle-waggle in his seat as if about 
to rise, we sent an elder to him to say that his 
remarks were not acceptable. The elder blushed 
and halted a little when we gave him the mission, 
but setting his teeth together he started for the 
offensive brother, leaned over the back of the pew 
and discharged the duty. We have never seen 
that brother since, but once in the street, and then 
he was looking the other way. 

By what right such men go about in ecclesiasti- 
cal vagabondism to spoil the peace of devotional 



4^4 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

meetings it is impossible to tell. Either that nui- 
sance must be abated or we must cease to " throw 
open " our prayer-meetings for exhortation. 

A few words about the uses of a week-night 
service. Many Christians do not appreciate it ; 
indeed, it is a great waste of time, unless there be 
some positive advantage gained. 

The French nation at one time tried having a 
Sabbath only once in ten days. The intelligent 
Christian finds he needs a Sabbath every three or 
four days, and so builds a brief one on the shore 
of a week-day in the shape of an extra religious 
service. He gets grace on Sabbath to bridge the 
chasm of worldliness between that and the next 
Sabbath, but finds the arch of the bridge very 
great, and so runs up a pier midway to help sus- 
tain the pressure. 

There are one hundred and sixty-eight hours in 
a week, and but two hours of public religious ser- 
vice on Sabbath. What chance have two hours in 
a battle with one hundred and sixty-eight? 

A week-night meeting allows church member- 
ship utterance. A minister cannot know how to 
preach unless in a conference meeting he finds the 
religious state of the people. He must feel the 
pulse before giving the medicine, otherwise he will 
not know whether it ought to be an anodyne or a 
stimulant. Every Christian ought to have some-. 



FRIDAY EVENING. 405 

thing to say. Every man is a walking eternity. 
The plainest man has Omnipotence to defend him, 
Omniscience to watch him, infinite Goodness to 
provide for him. The tamest religious experience 
has in it poems, tragedies, histories, Iliads, Para- 
dise Lost and Paradise Regained. Ought not such 
an one have something to say ? 

If you were ever in the army you know what it 
is to see an officer on horseback dash swiftly past 
carrying a despatch. You wondered as he went 
what the news was. Was the army to advance, 
or was an enemy coming ? 

So every Christian carries a despatch from God 
to the world. Let him ride swiftly to deliver it. 
The army is to advance and the enemy is coming. 
Go out and fulfill your mission. You may have 
had a letter committed to your care, and after some 
days you find it in one of your pockets : you for- 
got to deliver it. Great was your chagrin when 
you found that it pertained to some sickness or 
trouble. God gives every man a letter of warning 
or invitation to carry, and what will be your cha- 
grin in the judgment to find that you have forgot- 
ten it ! 

A week-night meeting widens the pulpit till aH 
the people can stand on it. Such a service tests 
one's piety. No credit for going to church on Sab- 
bath. Places of amusement are all closed, and 
33 



406 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

there is no money to be made. But week-nights 
every kind of temptation and opportunity spreads 
before a man, and if he goes to the praying circle 
he must give up these things. The man who goes 
to the weekly service regularly through moonlight 
and pitch darkness, through good walking and 
slush ankle-deep, will in the book of judgment 
find it set down to his credit. He will have a bet- 
ter seat in heaven than the man who went only 
when the walking was good, and the weather com- 
fortable, and the services attractive, and his health 
perfect. That service which costs nothing God ac- 
counts as nothing. 

A week-night service thrusts religion in the secu- 
larities of the week. It is as much as to say, "This 
is God's Wednesday, or God's Thursday, or God's 
Friday, or God's week." You would not give much 
for a property the possession of which you could 
have only one-seventh of the time, and God does 
not want that man whose services he can have only 
on Sabbath. If you paid full wages to a man and 
found out that six-sevenths of the time he was 
serving a rival house, you would be indignant ; 
and the man who takes God's goodness and gives 
six-sevenths of his time to the world, the flesh and 
the devil is an abomination to the Lord. The 
whole week ought to be a temple of seven rooms 
dedicated to God. You may, if you will, make one 



FRIDA Y E VENING. 407 

room the holy of holies, but let all the temple be 
consecrate. 

The week-night service gives additional oppor- 
tunity of religious culture, and we find it so diffi- 
cult to do right and be right that we cannot afford 
to miss any opportunity. Such a service is a lunch 
between the Sabbath meals, and if we do not take 
it we get weak and faint. A truth coming to us 
then ought to be especially effective. 

If you are on a railroad train, and stop at the 
depot, and a boy comes in with a telegram, all the 
passengers lean forward and wonder if it is for 
them. It may be news from home. It must be 
urgent or it would not be brought there. Now, if 
while we are rushing on in the whirl of every-day 
excitement, a message of God meets us, it must 
be an urgent and important message. If God 
speaks to us in a meeting mid-week, it is because 
there is something that needs to be said before 
next Sunday. 





% 



renin 



¥ek,¥kfcle. 



CHAPTER LXV. 

THE SABBATH EVENING TEA-TABLE, 

WHEN this evening comes we do not have 
any less on our table because it is a sacred 
day, but a little more. On other evenings we 
have in our dining-hall three of the gas-burners 
lighted, but on Sabbath evening we have four. We 
try to have the conversation cheerfully religious. 

After the children are sleepy we do not keep 
them up to recite the "Larger Catechism." During 
summer vacation, when we have no evening service 
to attend at church, we sometimes have a few chap- 
ters of a Christian book read or a column of a 
Christian newspaper, or if any one has an essay 
on any religious theme, we hear that. 

We tarry long after the tea has got cold. We 
do not care if the things are not cleared off till 
next morning. If any one has a perplexing pas- 
sage of Scripture to explain, we gather all the 
lights possible on that subject. We send up stairs 
for concordance and Bible dictionary. It may be 
ten o'clock at night before the group is dispersed 
from the Sabbath evening tea-table. 

411 



412 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Some of the chapters following may be consid- 
ered as conversations condensed or as paragraphs 
read. You will sometimes ascribe them to the 
host, at other times to the hostess, at other times 
to the strangers within the gates. 

Old Dominie Scattergood often came in on Sab- 
bath evenings. He was too old to preach, and so 
had much leisure. Now, an old minister is a great 
joy to us, especially if life has put sugar rather 
than vinegar in his disposition. Dominie Scatter- 
good had in his face and temper the smiles of all 
the weddings he had ever solemnized, and in his 
handshaking all the hearty congratulations that 
had ever been offered him. 

His hair was as white as any snow-bank through 
which he had waded to meet his appointments. 
He sympathized with every one, could swing from 
mood to mood very easily, and found the bridge 
between laughter and tears a short one and soon 
crossed. He was like an orchard in October after 
some of the frosts, the fruit so ripe and mellow 
that the least breeze would fill the laps of the chil- 
dren. He ate scarcely anything at the tea-table, 
for you do not want to put much fuel in an engine 
when it has nearly reached the depot. Old Domi- 
nie Scattergood gave his entire time to religious 
discourse when he sat with us at the close of the 
Lord's day. 



SABBATH EVENING. 



413 



How calm and bright and restful the light that 
falls on the Sabbath evening tea-table ! Blessed 
be its memories for ever and for ever ! and Jessie, 
and De Witt, and May, and Edith, and Frank, and 
the baby, and all the visitors, old and young, thick- 
haired and bald-headed, say Amen ! 




CHAPTER LXVI. 

THE WARM HEART OF CHRIST 

THE first night that old Dominie Scattergood 
sat at our tea-table, we asked him whether 
he could make his religion work in the insignifi- 
cant affairs of life, or whether he was accustomed 
to apply his religion on a larger scale. The Dom- 
inie turned upon us like a day-dawn, and addressed 
us as follows : 

There is no warmer Bible phrase than this: 
"Touched with the feeling of our infirmities!' The 
Divine nature is so vast, and the human so small, 
that we are apt to think that they do not touch 
each other at any point. We might have ever 
so many mishaps, the government at Washington 
would not hear of them, and there are multitudes 
in Britain whose troubles Victoria never knows ; 
but there is a Throne against which strike our 
most insignificant perplexities. What touches us 
touches Christ. What annoys us, annoys Christ. 
What robs us, robs Christ. He is the great nerve- 
centre to which thrill all sensations which touch us 
who are his members. 

He is touched with our physical infirmities. I 

414 



THE WARM HEART OF CHRIST. 415 

do not mean that he merely sympathizes with a 
patient in collapse of cholera, or in the delirium 
of a yellow fever, or in the anguish of a broken 
back, or in all those annoyances that come from 
a disordered nervous condition. In our excited 
American life sound nerves are a rarity. Human 
sympathy in the case I mention amounts to noth- 
ing. Your friends laugh at you and say you have 
" the blues," or " the high strikes," or " the dumps," 
or " the fidgets." But Christ never laughs at the 
whims, the notions, the conceits, the weaknesses, 
of the nervously disordered. Christ probably suf- 
fered in something like this way, for he had lack 
of sleep, lack of rest, lack of right food, lack of 
shelter, and his temperament was finely strung. 

Chronic complaints, the rheumatism, the neu- 
ralgia, the dyspepsia, after a while cease to excite 
human sympathy, but with Christ they never be- 
come an old story. He is as sympathetic as when 
you felt the first twinge of inflamed muscle or the 
first pang of indigestion. When you cannot sleep, 
Christ keeps awake with you. All the pains you 
ever had in your head are not equal to the pains 
Christ had in his head. All the acute suffering 
you ever had in your feet is not equal to the 
acute suffering Christ had in his feet. By his own 
hand he fashioned your every bone, strung every 
nerve, grew every eyelash, set every tooth in its 



41 6 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

socket, and your even' physical disorder is patent 
to him, and touches his sympathies. 

He is also touched with the infirmities of our 
prayers. Nothing bothers the Christian more than 
the imperfections of his prayers. His getting 
down on his knees seems to be the signal for his 
thoughts to fly ever)- whither. While praying 
about one thing he is thinking about another. 
Could you ever keep your mind ten minutes on 
one supplication ? I never could. While you are 
praying, your store comes in, your kitchen comes 
in, your losses and gains come in. The minister 
spreads his hands for prayer, and you put your 
head on the back of the pew in front, and travel 
round the world in five minutes. 

A brother rises in prayer-meeting to lead in 
supplication. After he has begun, the door slams, 
and you peep through your fingers to see who is 
coming in. You say to yourself, " What a finely- 
expressed prayer, or what a blundering specimen ! 
But how long he keeps on ! Wish he would stop ! 
He prays for the world's conversion. I wonder 
how much he gives toward it? There! I don't 
think I turned the gas down in the parlor! Won- 
der if Bridget has got home yet ? Wonder if they 
have thought to take that cake out of the oven ? 
Oh what a fool I was to put my name on the back 



THE WARM HEART OF CHRIST. 417 

of that note ! Ought to have sold those goods for 
cash and not on credit!" and so you go on tumb- 
ling over one thing after another until the gentle- 
man closes his prayer with Amen ! and you lift up 
your head, saying, " There ! I haven't prayed one 
bit. I am not a Christian !" Yes, you are, if you 
have resisted the tendency. Christ knows how 
much you have resisted, and how thoroughly we 
are disordered of sin, and he will pick out the one 
earnest petition from the rubbish and answer it. 
To the very depth of his nature he sympathizes 
with the infirmity of our prayers. 

He is touched with the infirmity of our temper. 

There are some who notwithstanding all that is 
said or done to them can smile back. But many 
of you are so constructed that if a man insults 
you, you either knock him down or wish you 
could. While with all resolution and prayer you 
resist this, remember that Christ knows how much 
you have been lied about, and misrepresented, and 
trod on. He knows that though you said some- 
thing that was hot, you kept back something that 
was ten times hotter. He takes into account your 
explosive temperament. He knows that it re- 
quires more skill to drive a fiery span than a tame 
roadster. He knows how hard you have put down 
the " brakes," and is touched with the feeling of 

your infirmity. 

34 



41 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Christ also sympathizes with our poor efforts at 
doing good. 

Our work does not seem to amount to much. 
We teach a class, or distribute a bundle of tracts* 
or preach a sermon, and we say, " Oh, if I had 
done it some other way !" Christ will make no 
record of our bungling way, if we did the best we 
could. He will make record of our intention and 
the earnestness of our attempt. We cannot get 
the attention of our class, or we break down in our 
exhortation, or our sermon falls dead, and we go 
home disgusted, and sorry we tried to speak, and 
feel Christ is afar off. Why, he is nearer than if 
we had succeeded, for he knows that we need 
sympathy, and is touched with our infirmity. 

It is comforting to know that it is not the learned 
and the great and the eloquent that Christ seems 
to stand closest by. The "Swamp-angel" was a 
big gun, and made a stunning noise, but it burst 
before it accomplished anything, while many an 
humble rifle helped decide the contest. Christ 
made salve out of spittle to cure a blind man, and 
the humblest instrumentality may, under God, cure 
the blindness of the soul. Blessed be God for the 
comfort of his gospel ! 



CHAPTER LXVII. 

. SACRIFICING EVERYTHING. 

OURSELVES. — Dominie Scattergood, why did 
Christ tell the man inquiring about his soul 
to sell all he had and give everything to the poor ? 
Is it necessary for one to impoverish himself in 
order to be a Christian ? 

The Dominie. — You mistake the purport of 
Christ's remark. He was not here teaching the 
importance of benevolence, but the duty of self- 
conquest. That young man had an all-absorbing 
love of wealth. Money was his god, and Christ 
is not willing to occupy the throne conjointly with 
any other deity. This was a case for what the 
doctors call heroic treatment. If a physician meet 
a case of unimportant sickness, he prescribes a 
mild curative, but sometimes he comes to a room 
where the case is almost desperate ; ordinary 
medicine would not touch it. It is " kill or cure," 
and he treats accordingly. This young man that 
Christ was medicating was such a case. There 
did not seem much prospect, and he gives him 
this powerful dose, " Sell all that thou hast and 
give to the poor !" 

419 



420 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

It does not follow that we must all do the same, 
any more than because belladonna or arsenic is 
administered in one case of illness we should 
therefore all go to taking belladonna or arsenic. 
Because one man in the hospital must have his 
arm amputated all the patients need not expect 
amputation. The silliest thing that business-men 
could do would be to give all their property away 
and turn their families into the street. The most 
Christian thing for you to do is to invest your 
money in the best way possible, and out of your 
business, industriously carried on, to contribute 
the largest possible percentage to the kingdom of 
God. 

Still, we must admire the manner in which the 
Great Physician took the diagnosis of this man's 
case and grappled it. We all need heroic spiritual 
treatment. We do not get well of sin because we 
do not realize what a dire disease it is, and that 
we cannot cure it with a spiritual panacea, a gentle 
antidote, a few grains of spiritual morphine, a mild 
moral corrective or a few drops of peppermint on 
white sugar. 

We want our pride killed, and we read an essay 
on that sweet grace of humility, and we go on as 
proud as ever. The pleasant lozenger does not 
do the work. Rather let us set ourselves to do 
that for Christ which is most oppugnant to our 



SACRIFICING EVERYTHING. ^21 

natural feelings. You do not take part in prayer- 
meeting because you cannot pray like Edward 
Payson, or exhort like John Summerfield. If you 
want to crush your pride, get up anyhow, though 
your knees knock together, and your tongue 
catches fast, and you see some godless hearer 
in prayer-meeting laughing as though she would 
burst. 

Deal with your avarice in the same heroic style. 
Having heard the charitable cause presented, at 
the first right impulse thrust your hand in your 
pocket where the money is, and pull it out though 
it half kills you. Pull till it comes. Put it on 
the plate with an emphasis, and turn your face 
away before you are tempted to take it back 
again. All your sweet contemplation about be- 
nevolence will not touch your case. Heroic treat- 
ment or nothing ! 

In the same way destroy the vindictiveness of 
your nature. Treatises on Christian brotherhood 
are not what you need. Select the man most dis- 
agreeable to you, and the one who has said the 
hardest things about you. Go up and shake 
hands with him, and ask him how his family is, 
and how his soul prospers. All your enmities 
will fly like a flock of quails at the bang of a rifle. 

We treat our sins too politely. We ought to 
call them by their right names. Hatred to our 

34* 



422 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

neighbor should not be called hard thoughts, but 
murder: "whoso hateth his brother is a mur- 
derer !" Sin is abominable. It has tusks and 
claws, and venom in its bite, and death in its 
stroke. Mild treatment will not do. It is loath- 
some, filthy and disgusting. If we bid a dog in 
gentle words to go out of the house, he will lie 
down under the table. It wants a sharp voice and 
a determined manner to make him clear out, and 
so sin is a vile cur that cannot be ejected by any 
conservative policy. It must be kicked out ! 

Alas for the young man of the text ! He re- 
fused Christ's word and went away to die, and 
there are now those who cannot submit to Christ's 
command, and after fooling their time away with 
moral elixirs suddenly relapse and perish. They 
might have been cured, but would not take the 
medicine. 




CHAPTER LXVIII. 

THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT 

THE children after quitting the tea-table were 
too noisy for Sabbath night, and some things 
were said at the table critical of their behavior, 
when old Dominie Scattergood dawned upon the 
subject and said : 

We expect too much of our children when they 
become Christians. Do not let us measure their 
qualifications by our own bushel. We ought not 
to look for a gravity and deep appreciation of 
eternal things such as we find in grown persons. 
We have seen old sheep in the pasture-field look 
anxious and troubled because the lambs would 
frisk. 

No doubt the children that were lifted by their 

mothers in Christ's arms, and got his blessing, five 

minutes after he set them down were as full of 

romp as before they came to him. The boy that 

because he has become a Christian is disgusted 

with ball-playing, the little girl who because she 

has given her heart to God has lost her interest in 

her waxen-doll, are morbid and unhealthy. You 

in 



424 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

ought not to set the life of a vivacious child to the 
tune of Old Hundred. 

When the little ones come before you and apply 
for church membership, do not puzzle them with 
big words, and expect large " experiences." It is 
now in the Church as when the disciples of old 
told the mothers not to bother Christ with their 
babes. As in some households the grown people 
eat first, and the children have to wait till the 
second table, so there are persons who talk as 
though God would have the grown people first 
sit down at his banquet ; and if there is anything 
over, the little ones mav come in for a share. 

Xo, no ! If the supply at the Lord's table were 
limited, he would let the children come in first and 
the older ones go without, as a punishment for not 
having come in while they themselves were chil- 
dren. If the wind is from the north-east, and the 
air is full of frost and snow, and part of the flock 
must be left out on the mountains, let it be the old 
sheep, for they can stand it better than the lambs. 
O Shepherd of Israel, crowd them all in before 
the coming of the tempest ! 

Myself. — Dominie Scattergood, what do you 
think of this discussion in the papers on the sub- 
ject of liturgies ? 

Scattergood. — I know there has been much talk 
of late about liturgies in the churches, and whether 



THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT 42$ 

or not audiences should take audible part in re- 
ligious service. While others are discussing that 
point, let me say that all the service of the Church 
ought to be responsive if not with audible "Amen," 
and unanimous " Good Lord deliver us," then with 
hearty outburst of soul. 

Let not the prayer of him that conducts public 
service go up solitary and alone, but accompanied 
by the heartfelt ejaculation of all the auditory. 
We sit down on a soft cushion, in a pew by archi- 
tectural skill arranged to fit the shape of our back, 
and are tempted to fall into unprofitable reveries. 
Let the effort be on the part of every minister to 
make the prayer and the Scripture-reading and 
the giving out of the hymn so emphatic that the 
audience cannot help but respond with all the 
soul. 

Let the minister, before going into the pulpit, look 
over the whole field and recall what are the styles of 
bereavement in the congregation— whether they be 
widowhood, orphanage or childlessness ; what are 
the kinds of temporal loss his people may recently 
have suffered — whether in health, in reputation or 
estate; and then get both his shoulders under these 
troubles, and in his prayer give one earnest and 
tremendous lift, and there will be no dullness, no 
indifference, no lack of multitudinous response. 

The reason that congregations have their heads 



425 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

bobbing about in prayer-time is because the officiat- 
ing clergyman is apt to petition in the abstract. 
He who calls the troubles of his people by their 
right names, and tenderly lays hold of the cancers 
of the souls before him, will not lack in getting 
immediate heartfelt, if not audible, response. 

While we have not as much interest in the agi- 
tated question of liturgies as would make us say 
ten words about it, we are interested more than 
we can tell in the question, How shall the officiat- 
ing ministers, in all the churches, give so much 
point, and adaptedness, and vigor, and blood-red 
earnestness of soul to their public devotions as 
shall make all the people in church feel that it is 
the struggle for their immortal life in which the 
pastor is engaged ? Whether it be in tones that 
strike the ear, or with a spiritual emphasis heard 
only in the silent corridor of the heart, let all the 
people say Amen ! 

Myself. — What do you think, dominie, about all 
this talk about sensationalism in the pulpit? 

Scattergood. — As far as I can understand, it 
seems to be a war between stagnation and sensa- 
tionalism, and I dislike both. 

I do not know which word is the worst. It is 
the national habit in literature and religion to call 
that sensationalism which we ourselves cannot do. 
If an author write a book that will not sell, he is 



THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT 427 

apt to charge the books of the day which do suc- 
ceed as being sensational. There are a great many 
men who, in the world and the Church, are dead 
failures, who spend their time in letting the public 
know that they are not sensationalists. The fact 
is that they never made any stir while living, nor 
will they in dying, save as they rob the undertaker 
of his fees, they not leaving enough to pay their 
dismission expenses. 

I hate sensationalism in the pulpit so far as that 
v/ord means the preaching of everything but the 
gospel, but the simple fact is that whenever and 
wherever faith and repentance and heaven and hell 
are proclaimed with emphasis there will be a sen- 
sation. The people in our great cities are hungry 
for the old gospel of Christ. If our young men 
in the ministry want large audiences, let them quit 
philosophizing, and hair-splitting, and botanizing, 
and without gloves take hold of men's sins and 
troubles, and there will be no lack of hearers. 
Stagnation is worse than sensationalism. 

I have always noticed that just in proportion as 
a man cannot get along himself he is fearful of 
some one else making an excitement. Last week 
a mud-turtle down by the brook opened its shell 
and discoursed to a horse that was coming down 
to drink. The mud-turtle said to the horse: "Just 
as I get sound asleep you are sure to come past 



428 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

and wake me up. We always used to have a good 
quiet time down here in the swamp till you got in the 
habit of thumping along this way. I am conserva- 
tive and like to keep in my shell. I have been pas- 
tor of thirteen other mud-turtles, and we always had 
peace till you came, and next week at our semi- 
annual meeting of mud-turtles we shall either have 
you voted a nuisance or will talk it over in private, 
eight or ten of us, which will probably be the more 
prudent way." Then the mud-turtle's shell went 
shut with a snap, at which the horse kicked up his 
heels as he turned to go up to the barn to be har- 
nessed to a load of corn that was ready for the 
market. 

Let us all wake up and go to work. There are 
in the private membership of our churches and in 
the ministry a great many men who are dead, but 
have never had the common decency to get buried. 
With the harvest white and " lodging " for lack of 
a sickle, instead of lying under the trees criticising 
the sweating reapers who are at work, let us throw 
off our own coat and go out to see how good a 
swathe we can cut. 

Myself. — You seem, Dominie Scattergood, 
though you have been preaching a great while, 
to be very healthy and to have a sound throat. 

Scattergood. — Yes ; I don't know any reason 
why ministers should not be as well as other per- 



THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT. 429 

sons. I have never had the ministers' sore throat, 
but have avoided it by the observance of two or 
three rules which I commend to you of less expe- 
rience. The drug-stores are full of troches, loz- 
enges and compounds for speakers and singers. 
All these medicines have an important mission, 
but how much better would it be to avoid the 
ills than to spend one's time in trying to cure 
them ! 

1. Speak naturally. Let not incompetent elo- 
cutionists or the barbarisms of custom give you 
tones or enunciations at war with those that God 
implanted. Study the vocal instrument and then 
play the best tune on it possible, but do not try to 
make a flute sound like a trumpet, or a bagpipe 
do the work of a violin. 

2. Remember that the throat and lungs were no 
more intended to speak with than the whole body. 
If the vocal organs get red hot during a religious 
service, while the rest of the body does not sym- 
pathize with them, there will be inflammation, 
irritation and decay. But if the man shall, by 
appreciation of some great theme of time and 
eternity, go into it with all his body and soul, there 
will be an equalization of the whole physical or- 
ganism, and bronchitis will not know whether to 
attack the speaker in his throat, right knee or left 

ankle, and while it is deciding at what point to 
35 



43° AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

make assault the speaker will go scot-free. The 
man who besieges an audience only with his throat 
attempts to take a castle with one gun, but he who 
comes at them with head, eyes, hand, heart, feet, 
unlimbers against it a whole park of artillery. 
Then Sebastopol is sure to be taken. 

Myself. — I notice, dominie, that your handwriting 
is not as good as your health. Your letter in 
reply to my invitation to be here was so indistinct 
that I could not tell whether it was an acceptance 
or a declinature. 

Scatter good. — Well, I have not taken much care 
of my autograph. I know that the attempt has 
been made to reduce handwriting to a science. 
Many persons have been busy in gathering the 
signatures of celebrated men and women. A 
Scotchman, by the name of Watson, has paid 
seventy-five thousand dollars for rare autographs. 
Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, has a collection 
marvelous for interest. 

After we read an interesting book we want to 
see the author's face and his autograph. But 
there is almost always a surprise or a disappoint- 
ment felt when for the first time we come upon 
the handwriting of persons of whom we have 
heard or read much. We often find that the bold, 
dashing nature sometimes wields a trembling pen, 
and that some man eminent for weakness has a 



THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT. 43 1 

defiant penmanship that looks as if he wrote with 
a splinter of thunderbolt. 

I admit that there are instances in which the 
character of the man decides the style of his pen- 
manship. Lord Byron's autograph was as reckless 
as its author. George Washington's signature 
was a reflection of his dignity. The handwriting 
of Samuel Roofers was as smooth as his own 
nature. Robespierre's fierce-looking autograph 
seems to have been written with the dagger of a 
French revolution. 

On the contrary, one's handwriting is often the 
antipodes of his character. An unreasonable 
schoolmaster has often, by false instruction, 
cramped or ruined the pupil's chirography for 
ever. If people only knew how a brutal peda- 
gogue in the academy used to pull my ears while 
learning to write, I should not be so often censured 
for my own miserable scribble. I defy any boy to 
learn successfully to make " hooks and trammels" 
in his copy-book, or ever after learn to trace a 
graceful calligraphy, if he had " old Taylor" bawling 
over him. I hope never to meet that man this side 
of heaven, lest my memory of the long-ago past 
be too much for the sense of ministerial propriety. 

There are great varieties of circumstances that 
influence and decide the autograph. I have no 
faith in the science of chirography. I could, from 



432 AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

a pack of letters in one pigeon hole, put to rout 
the whole theory. I have come to the conclusion 
that he who judges of a man's character by his 
penmanship makes a very poor guess. The bold- 
est specimen of chirography I ever received was 
from a man whose wife keeps him in perpetual 
tremor, he surrendering even* time she looks 
toward the broomstick. 

Myself. — What do you think, dominie, of the 
fact that laymen have begun to preach? and what 
is your opinion of the work they are doing in 
Scotland ? 

For the first time in manv a dav the old dominie 
grew sarcastic, and said: 

What are we coming to? Get out vour fire- 
engines. There is a conflagration. What work 
Messrs. Moody, Sankey, Phillips, Bliss, Jacobs, 
Burnell, Durant and fifty other lavmen are doinof! 
Wherever thev £0 thev have lar^e concourses of 
people, and powerful revivals of religion follow. 
Had we not better appoint a meeting of confer- 
ence or presbyten" to overhaul these men who are 
saving souls without license ? Xo ! What we 
want is ten thousand men just like them, coming - 
up from among the people, with no professional 
earb. and hearts hot with religious fervor, and 
bound by no conventionalities or stereotyped no- 
tions about the wav things ought to be done. 



THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT. 433 

I have a sly suspicion that the layman who has 
for seven years given the most of his time to the 
study of the truth is better prepared to preach the 
gospel than a man who has given that length of 
time in theological seminaries to the study of what 
other people say about the Bible. In other words, 
we like water just dipped from the spring, though 
handed in a gourd, rather than water that has been 
standing a week in a silver pitcher. 

After Calvin has twisted us one way, and Ar- 
minius has twisted us another, and we get our 
head full of the old Andover and New Haven 
theological fights, and the difference between Ante- 
Nicene Trinitarianism and Post-Nicene Trinitarian- 
ism, it is a luxury to meet some evangelist who can 
tell us in our common mother-tongue of Him who 
came to seek and to save that which was lost. 

I say let our learned institutions push theological 
education to its highest excellency, preparing men 
for spheres which none but the cultured and schol- 
arly are fit for, but somehow let us beat the drum 
and gather a battalion of lay-workers. We have 
enough wise men to tell us about fishes, about 
birds, about rocks, about stars — enough Ley den 
jars, enough telescopes, enough electric batteries ; 
but we have not more than one man where we 
ought to have a hundred to tell the story of Christ 

and the soul. 

35* 



434 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Some cry out, " It is dangerous to have laymen 
take such prominent positions in the Church." 
Dangerous to what? Our dignity, our preroga- 
tives, our clerical rights? It is the same old story. 
If we have a mill on the stream, we do not want 
some one else to build a mill on the same stream. 
It will take the water off our wheel. But, blessed 
be God ! the river of salvation is deep and strong 
enough to grind corn for all nations. 

If a pulpit is so weak that the wave of religious 
zeal on the part of the laity submerges it, then let 
it go under. We cannot expect all other shipping 
to forsake the sea lest they run down our craft. 
We want more watchmen on the wall, more sen- 
tinels at the gate, more recruits for the field. For- 
ward the whole Christian laity ! Throw up no 
barrier to their advancement. Do not hang the 
Church until dead by the neck with •' red-tape." 

I laughed outright, though I ought to have cried, 
when I read in one of our papers a statement of 
the work of Moody and Sankey in Edinburgh, 
which statement closed with the luscious remark 
that " Probably the Lord is blessing their work." 
I never saw a word put in more awkward and 
forced and pitiable predicament than that word 
probably. While heaven and earth and hell have 
recognized the stupendous work now going on in 



THE YOUNGSTERS HAVE LEFT 43 J 

Scotland under God and through the instrumental- 
ity of these American evangelists, a correspondent 
thinks that probably something has happened. 

Oh how hard it is to acknowledge that men are 
doing good if they do not work in our way and by 
our methods ! One's heart must have got awfully 
twisted and near being damned who can look on a 
great outpouring of the Holy Ghost and have any 
use for probabilities. The tendency is even among 
Christians to depreciate that which goes on inde- 
pendent of themselves and in a way oppugnant to 
their personal taste. People do not like those who 
do a thing which they themselves have not been 
able to accomplish. 

The first cry is, " The people converted are the 
lower population, and not the educated." We 
wonder if five hundred souls brought to Christ 
from the " Cowgate " and " Coalhole," and made 
kings and priests unto God, and at last seated on 
thrones so high they will not be able to reach down 
with their foot to the crown of an earthly monarch, 
is not worth some consideration ? 

Then the cry is, "They will not hold out." 
Time only will show that. They are doing all 
they can. You cannot expect them to hold out 
ten years in six weeks. The most faithful Chris- 
tians we have ever known were brought in through 
revivals, and the meanest, stingiest, dullest, hard- 



436 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

est-to-get-on-with Christians have joined when the 
church was dead. 

When a candidate for admission comes before 
session in revival times, I ask him only seven or 
eight questions ; but when he comes during a cold 
state of religion, I ask him twenty questions, and 
get the elders to ask him as many more. In other 
words, I have more faith m conversions under spe- 
cial religious influence than under ordinary. 

The best luck I ever had in fishing was when I 
dropped the net in the bay and brought up at one 
haul twenty bluefish, with only three or four moss- 
bunkers, and the poorest luck I ever had was when, 
after standing two hours in the soggy meadow 
with one hook on the line, I felt I had a bite, and 
began to pull, more and more persuaded of the 
great size of the captive, until I flung to the shore 
a snapping-turtle. As a gospel fisherman I would 
rather run the risk of a large haul than of a soli- 
tary angling. I can soon sort out and throw over- 
board the few moss-bunkers. 

Oh for great awakem'ti^s all over Christendom ! 
We have had a drought so long we can stand a 
freshet. Let the Hudson and the Thames and the 
Susquehanna rise and overflow the lowlands, and 
the earth be full of the knowledge of God as the 
waters fill the seas. That time is hastening, prob- 
ably ! 



CHAPTER LXIX. 

FA MIL Y PR A YERS. 

TAKE first the statement that unless our chil- 
dren are saved in early life they probably 
never will be. They who go over the twentieth 
year without Christ are apt to go all the way 
without him. Grace, like flower-seed, needs to 
be sown in spring. The first fifteen years of life, 
and often the first six, decide the eternal destiny. 

The first thing to do with a lamb is to put it in 
the arms of the Great Shepherd. Of course we 
must observe natural laws. " Give a child excessive 
meat diet, and it will grow up sensual, and cate- 
chism three times a day, and sixty grains in each 
dose, won't prevent it. Talk much in your child's 
presence about the fashions, and it will be fond of 
dress, notwithstanding all your lectures on humility. 
Fill your house with gossip, and your children will 
tattle. Culture them as much as you will, but give 
them plenty of money to spend, and they will go 
to destruction. 

But while we are to use common sense in every 
direction respecting a child, the first thing is to 

437 



43 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

strive for its conversion, and there is nothing more 
potent than family prayers. No child ever gets 
over having heard parents pray for him. I had 
many sound threshings when I was a boy (not as 
many as I ought to have had, for I was the last 
child and my parents let me off), but the most 
memorable scene in my childhood was father and 
mother at morning and evening prayers. I can- 
not forget it, for I used often to be squirming 
around on the floor and looking at them while 
they were praying. Your son may go to the ends 
of the earth, and run through the whole catalogue 
of transgression, but he will remember the family 
altar, and it will be a check, and a call, and perhaps 
his redemption. 

Family prayers are often of no use. Perhaps 
they are too hurried. We have so much before 
us of the day's work that we hustle the children 
together. We get half through the chapter before 
the family are seated. We read as if we were 
reading for a wager. We drop on our knees, and 
are in the second or third sentence before they all 
get down. It is an express train, with amen for 
the first depot. We rush for the hat and overcoat, 
and are on the way to the store, leaving the im- 
pression that family prayers are a necessary nui- 
sance, and we had better not have had any gather- 
ing of the family at all. Better have given them 



FAMILY PRAYERS. 439 

a kiss all around ; it would have taken less time 
and would have been more acceptable to God and 
them. 

Family prayers often fail in adaptedness. Do 
not read for the morning lesson a genealogical 
chapter, or about Samson's setting the foxes' tails 
on fire, or the prophecy about the horses, black, 
and red, and speckled, unless you explain why 
they were speckled. For all the good your chil- 
dren get from such reading, you might as well 
have read a Chinese almanac. Rather give the 
story of Jesus, and the children climbing into his 
arms, or the lad with the loaves and fishes, or the 
Sea of Galilee dropping to sleep under Christ's 
lullaby. 

Stop and ask questions. Make the exercise so 
interesting that little Johnny will stop playing with 
his shoe-strings, and Jenny will quit rubbing the 
cat's fur the wrong way. Let the prayer be 
pointed and made up of small words, and no wise 
information to the Lord about things he knows 
without your telling him. Let the children feel 
they are prayed for. Have a hymn if any of you 
can sing. Let the season be spirited, appropriate 
and gladly solemn. 

Family prayer also fails when the whole day is 
not in harmony with it. A family prayer, to be 
worth anything, ought to be twenty-four hours 



44° AROUXD THE TEA-TABLE. 

long. It ought to give the pitch to all the day's 
work and behavior. The day when we get thor- 
oughly mad upsets the morning devotion. The 
life must be in the same key with the devotion. 

Family prayer is infinitely important. If you 
are a parent, and are not a professor of religion, 
and do not feel able to compose a prayer, get 
some one of the many books that have been 
written, put it down before you, and read prayers 
for the household. God has said that he will 
"pour out his fur}* upon the families that call not 
upon his name." 

Prayer for our children will be answered. My 
grandmother was a praying woman. My father's 
name was David. One day, he and other mem- 
bers of the family started for a gay party. Grand- 
mother said: "Go, David, and enjoy yourself; but 
all the time you and your brothers and sisters are 
there, I will be praying for you." They went, but 
did not have a very good time, knowing that their 
mother was praying for them. 

The next morning, grandmother heard loud 
weeping in the room below. She went down and 
found her daughter crvinof violentlv. What was 
the matter? She was in anxiety about her soul 
— an anxiety that found no relief short of the 
cross. Word came that David was at the barn 
in crreat aeon v. Grandmother went and found 



FAMILY PRAYERS. 44 1 

him on the barn floor, praying for the life of his 
soul. 

The news spread to the neighboring houses, 
and other parents became anxious about their 
children, and the influence spread to the village 
of Somerville, and there was a great turning unto 
God ; and over two hundred souls, in one day, 
stood up in the village church to profess faith in 
Christ. And it all started from my grandmothers 
prayer for her sons and daughters. May God 
turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and 
the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest he 
come and smite the earth with a curse ! 

36 




CHAPTER LXX. 

CALL TO SAILORS. 

ONE of the children asked us at the tea-table 
if we had ever preached at sea. We an- 
swered, No ! but we talked one Sabbath, mid-At- 
lantic, to the officers, crew and passengers of the 
steamship China. By the way, I have it as it was 
taken down at the time and afterward appeared 
in a newspaper, and here is the extract : 

No persons bound from New York to Liverpool 
ever had more cause for thanksgiving to God than 
we. The sea so smooth, the ship so staunch, the 
companionship so agreeable, all the circumstances 
so favorable. O Thou who holdest the winds in 
thy fist, blessed be thy glorious name for ever ! 

Englishmen, Costa Ricans, Germans, Spaniards, 
Japanese, Irishmen, Americans — gathered, never 
to meet again till the throne of judgment is lifted 
— let us join hands to-day around the cross of 
Jesus and calculate our prospect for eternity. A 
few moments ago we all had our sea-glasses up 
watching the vessel that went by. " What is her 
name ?" we all asked, and " Whither is she bound ?" 

442 



CALL TO SAILORS. 443 

We pass each other on the ocean of life to-day. 
We only catch a glimpse of each other. The ques- 
tion is, " Whither are we bound? For harbor of 
liofht or realm of darkness ?" As we decide these 
questions, we decide everything. 

No man gets to heaven by accident. If we ar- 
rive there, it will be because we turn the helm, set 
the sail, watch the compass and stand on the "look- 
out" with reference to that destination. There are 
many ways of being lost — only one way of being 
saved ; Jesus Christ is the way. He comes across 
this sea to-day, his feet on the glass of the wave, 
as on Galilee, his arm as strong, his voice as sooth- 
ing, his heart as warm. Whosoever will may have 
his comfort, his pardon, his heaven. 

Officers and crew of this ship, have you not 
often felt the need of divine help? In the hour 
of storm and shipwreck, far away from your homes, 
have you not called for heavenly rescue ? The God 
who then heard thy prayer will hear thee now. 
Risk not your soul in the great future without 
compass, or chart, or anchor, or helmsman. You 
will soon have furled your last sail, and run up the 
last ratline, and weathered the last gale, and made 
the last voyage. What next? Where then will 
be your home, who your companions, what your 
occupation ? 

Let us all thank God for this Sabbath which has 



444 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

come to us on the sea. How beautifully it bridges 
the Atlantic ! It hovers above every barque and 
brig and steamer. It speaks of a Jesus risen, a 
grave conquered, a heaven open. It is the same 
old Sabbath that blessed our early days. It is 
tropical in its luxuriance, but all its leaves are 
prayers, and all its blossoms praise. Sabbath on 
the sea ! How solemn ! How suggestive ! Let 
all its hours, on deck, in cabin, in forecastle, be 
sacred. 

Some of the old tunes that these sailors heard 
in boyhood times would sound well to-day floating 
among the rigging. Try " Jesus, lover of my soul," 
or " Come, ye sinners, poor and needy," or " There 
is a fountain filled with blood." As soon as they 
try those old hymns, the memory of loved ones 
would come back again, and the familiar group of 
their childhood would gather, and father would be 
there, and mother who gave them such good ad- 
vice when they came to sea, and sisters and 
brothers long since scattered and gone. 

Some of you have been pursued by benedictions 
for many years. I care not how many knots an 
hour you may glide along, the prayers once offered 
up for your welfare still keep up with you. I care 
not on what shore you land, those benedictions 
stand there to greet you. They will capture you 
yet for heaven. The prodigal after a while gets 



CALL TO SAILORS. 447 

tired of the swine-herd and starts for home, and 
the father comes out to greet him, and the old 
homestead rings with clapping cymbals, and quick 
feet, and the clatter of a banquet. If the God of 
thy childhood days should accost thee with forgiv- 
ing mercy, this ship would be a Bethel, and your 
hammock to-night would be the foot of the ladder 
down which the angels of God's love would come 
trooping. 

Now, may the blessing of God come down upon 
officers and crew and passengers ! Whatever our 
partings, our losses, our mistakes, our disasters in 
life, let none of us miss heaven. On that shore 
may we land amid the welcome of those who have 
gone before. They have long been waiting our 
arrival, and are now ready to conduct us to the 
foot of the throne. Look, all ye voyagers for 
eternity ! Land ahead ! Weeping may endure 
for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. 

What Paul said to the crew and passengers on 
the corn-ship of the Mediterranean is appropriate 
here: "Now I exhort you to be of good cheer!" 
God fit us for the day when the archangel, with 
one foot on the sea and the other on the land, 
shall swear by Him that liveth for ever and ever 
that time shall be no longer! 

36* 



CHAPTER LXXI. 

JEHOSHAPHA T 'S SHIPPING. 

YOUR attention is called to a Bible incident 
that you may not have noticed. Jehoshaphat 
was unfortunate with his shipping. He was about 
to start another vessel. The wicked men of Aha- 
ziah wanted to go aboard that vessel as sailors. 
Jehoshaphat refused to allow them to go, for the 
reason that he did not want his own men to mingle 
with those vicious people. 

In other words, he knew what you and I know 
very well, that it is never safe to go in the same 
boat with the wicked. But there are various 
applications of that idea. We too often forget 
it, and are not as wise as Jehoshaphat was when 
he refused to allow his men to be in companion- 
ship in the same boat with the wicked men of 
Ahaziah. 

The principle I stated is appropriate to the 
formation, in the first place, of all domestic alli- 
ances. I have often known women who married 
men for the purpose of reforming them from dis- 
sipated habits. I never knew one successful in 

443 



JEHOSHAPHAT'S SHIPPING 449 

the undertaking. Instead of the woman lifting 
the man up, the man drags her down. This is 
inevitably the case. The greatest risk that one 
ever undertakes is attempting the voyage of life 
in a boat in which the wicked sail ; this remark 
being most appropriate to the young persons who 
are in my presence. It is never safe to sail with 
the sons of Ahaziah. The aged men around me 
will bear out the statement that I have made. 
There is no exception to it. 

The principle is just as true in regard to all 
business alliances. I know it is often the case that 
men have not the choice of their worldly associa- 
tions, but there are instances where they may 
make their choice, and in that case I wish them to 
understand that it is never safe to go in the same 
boat with the vicious. No man can afford to stand 
in associations where Christ is maligned and scoffed 
at, or the things of eternity caricatured. Instead 
of your Christianizing them, they will heathenize 
you. While you propose to lift them up, they will 
drag you down. It is a sad thing when a man is 
obliged to stand in a business circle where men 
are deriding the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
For instance, rather than to be associated in busi- 
ness circles with Frothinghamite infidelity, give 
me a first-class Mohammedan, or an unconverted 
Chinese, or an unmixed Hottentot. There is no 



-':'. AROUXD THE TEA-TABL1 

danger that they will draw me down to their re- 



It therefore, you have a choice when you go 
out in the world as to whether you will be asso- 
ciated in business circles with men who love God, 
or those who are hostile to the Christian religion, 
you might better sacrifice some :: your fiiumrial 
ir:eres:s ar.a 5 : ara:r.^:ae :t::^t ::' G;: zhar. 
risk the interests of your immortal souL 

Jehoshaphat knew it was unsafe for his men to 
go in one boat with fhe men of Ahaziah, and you 
cannot afford to have business E.55 : : prions with 
those who despise God, and heed not his com- 
rr.aa rmeazs. . iir.:: :r.e :l:~. rr.a: a 5 rea: many 
men are forced into ass: 1: : ns fcbey despise; and 
mere art business circles in which we are com- 
pelled to go which we do not like, but if you have 
a zh::ze set zha: y:v. make ar. imeLicer.: arm safe 
ire. 

This principle is just as true in regard to social 
connections. Let no young man or woman go in a 
sz:;a'. z:r:'e v.mere me mmmmies are viz: : as :r 
hostile to the Christian religion. Vou will begin 
by reproving their faults, and end by copying 
them. Sin is contagious. You go among those 
who are profane, and you will be profane. \ : z 
go among those who use impure language, and 
you will use impure language. Go among those 



JEHOSHAPHA T ' S SHIPPING. 45 I 

who are given to strong drink, and you will inev- 
itably become an inebriate. There is no exception 
to the rule. A man is no better than the company 
he continually keeps. 

It is always best to keep ourselves under Chris- 
tian influences. It is not possible, if you mingle 
in associations that are positively Christian, not to 
be made better men or women. The Christian 
people with whom you associate may not be always 
talking their religion, but there is something in the 
moral atmosphere that will be life to your soul. 
You choose out for your most intimate associates 
eight or ten Christian people. You mingle in that 
association ; you take their counsel; you are guided 
by their example, and you live a useful life, and 
die a happy death, and go to a blessed eternity. 
There is no possibility of mistaking it; there is 
not an exception in all the universe or ages — not 
one. 

For this reason I wish that Christians engage in 
more religious conversation. I do not really think 
that Christian talk is of so high a type as it used 
to be. Some of you can look back to your very 
early days and remember how the neighbors used 
to come in and talk by the hour about Christ and 
heaven and their hopes of the eternal world. 
There has a great deal of that gone out of 
fashion. 



4- 5- AROUKD THE TEA TABLE. 

I suppose that if ten or fifteen of us should 
happen to come into a circle to spend the evening, 
we would talk about the late presidential election, 
or the recent flurry in Wall street, and about five 
hundred other things, and perhaps we would not 
talk any about Jesus Christ and our hopes of 
heaven. That is not Christianity* : that is heathen- 
ism. Indeed., I have sometimes been amazed to 
find Christian people actually lacking in subjects 
of conversation, while the two persons knew each 
of the other that he was a Christian. 

You take two Christian people of this modern 
cay and place them in the same room (I suppose 
the two men mav have no worldlv subjects in 
common). What are they talking about? There 
beine no worldlv subject common to them, thev 
are in great stress for a subject and after a long 
pause Mr. A remarks : " It is a pleasant evening 

Again there is a long pause. These two men, 
both redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus 
Christ heaven above them, hell beneath them, 
eternity before them, the glorious history of the 
Church of Jesus Christ behind them, certainly a:": -.-r 
a while they will converse on the subject of relig- 
ion. A few minutes have passed and Mr. B re- 
marks : "Fine autumn we are having 

A^ r ain there is a profound quiet Xow, you 
suppose that their religious feelings have really 



JEHOSHAFHAT'S SHIPPING. 453 

been dammed back for a little while ; the men 
have been postponing the things of God and 
eternity that they may approach the subject with 
more deliberation, and you wonder what useful 
thing Mr. B will say to Mr. A in conversation. 

It is the third time, and perhaps it is the last 
that these two Christian men will ever meet until 
they come face to face before the throne of God. 
They know it. The third attempt is now made. 
Mr. A says to Mr. B : " Feels like snow !" 

My opinion is, it must have felt more like ice. 
Oh, how little real, practical religious conversation 
there is in this day ! I would to God that we 
might get back to the old-time Christianity, when 
men and women came into associations, and felt, 
" Here I must use all the influence I can for Christ 
upon that soul, and get all the good I can. This 
may be the last opportunity I shall have in this 
world of interviewing that immortal spirit." 

But there are Christian associations where men 
and women do talk out their religion ; and my ad- 
vice to you is to seek out all those things, and 
remember that just in proportion as you seek such 
society will you be elevated and blessed. After 
all, the gospel boat is the only safe boat to sail in. 
The ships of Jehoshaphat went all to pieces at 
Eziono-eber. 

Come aboard this gospel craft, made in the dry- 



454 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

dock of heaven and launched nineteen hundred 
years ago in Bethlehem amid the shouting of the 
angels. Christ is the captain, and the children of 
God are the crew. The cargo is made up of the 
hopes and joys of all the ransomed. It is a ship 
bound heavenward, and all the batteries of God 
will boom a greeting as we sail in and drop anchor 
in the still waters. Come aboard that ship ; it is a 
safe craft ! The fare is cheap ! It is a certain 
harbor ! 

The men of Ahaziah were forbidden to come 
aboard the ships of Jehoshaphat, but all the world is 
invited to board this gospel craft. The vessel of 
Jehoshaphat went to pieces, but this craft shall drop 
anchor within the harbor, and mountains shall de- 
part, and hills shall be removed, and seas shall dry 
up, and time itself shall perish, but the mercy of 
the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon 
them that fear him. 



ArF^X^)/' 



$ 



CHAPTER LXXII. 

ALL ABOUT MERCY. 

BENEDICT XIII. decreed that when the Ger- 
man Catholics met each other, they should 
always give the following salutation, the one first 
speaking saying, " Praised be yesus Christ" the 
other responding, " For ever, amen" a. salutation 
fit for Protestants whenever they come together. 

The word " mercy " is used in the Bible two 
hundred and fourteen times ; it seems to be the 
favorite word of all the Scriptures. Sometimes it 
glances feebly upon us like dew in the starlight; 
then with bolder hand it seems to build an arched 
bridge from one storm-cloud of trouble to another; 
and then again it trickles like a fountain upon the 
thirst of the traveler. 

The finest roads I ever saw are in Switzerland : 
they are built by the government, and at very short 
intervals you come across water pouring out of the 
rocks. The government provides cups for men 
and troughs for the animals to drink out of. And 
our King has so arranged it that on the highway 

37 455 



45 6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

we are traveling toward heaven, ever and anon 
there shall dash upon us the clear, sweet water 
that flows from the eternal Rock. I propose to tell 
you some things about God's mercy. 

First, think of his pardoning mercy. The gospel 
finds us shipwrecked ; the wave beneath ready to 
swallow us, the storm above pelting us, our good 
works foundered, there is no such thing as getting 
ashore unhelped. The gospel finds us incarcerated ; 
of all those who have been in thick dungeon 
darkness, not one soul ever escaped by his own 
power. If a soul is delivered at all, it is because 
some one on the outside shall shove the bolt and 
swing open the door, and let the prisoner come out 
free. 

The sin of the soul is not, as some would seem 
to think, just a little dust on the knee or elbow 
that you can strike off in a moment and without 
any especial damage to you. Sin has utterly dis- 
comfited us ; it has ransacked our entire nature ; 
it has ruined us so completely that no human power 
can ever reconstruct us; but through the darkness 
of our prison gloom and through the storm there 
comes a voice from heaven, saying, "I will abun- 
dantly pardon." 

Then think of his restraining mercy. I do not 
believe that it is possible for any man to tell his 
capacity for crime until he has been tested. There 



ALL ABOUT MERCY. 457 

have been men who denounced all kinds of frauds, 
who scorned all mean transactions, who would have 
had you believe that it was impossible for them ever 
to be tempted to dishonesty, and yet they may be 
owning to-day the chief part of the stock in the 
Credit Mobilier. 

There are men who once said they never could 
be tempted to intemperance. They had no mercy 
on the drunkard. They despised any man who 
became a victim of strong drink. Time passed 
on, and now they are the victims of the bottle, so 
far gone in their dissipation that it is almost im- 
possible that they ever should be rescued. 

So there have been those who were very hard 
on all kinds of impurity, and who scoffed at un- 
chastity, and who said that it was impossible that 
they should ever be led astray ; but to-night they 
are in the house whose gates are the gates of hell ! 
It is a very dangerous thing for a man to make a 
boast and say, " Such and such a sin I never could 
be tempted to commit." 

There are ten thousand hands of mercy holding 
us up; there are ten thousand hands of mercy 
holding us back, or we would long ago have gone 
over the precipice, and instead of sitting to-night 
in a Christian sanctuary, amid the respected and 
the good, our song would have been that of the 
drunkard, or we would be " hail fellows well met" 



45 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

with the renegade and the profligate. Oh, the re- 
straining mercy of God ! Have you never cele- 
brated it ? Have you never rejoiced in it ? 

Think also of his guiding mercy. You have 
sometimes been on a journey, and come to where 
there were three roads — one ahead of you, one to 
the right and one to the left. It was a lonely place, 
and you had no one of whom to ask advice. You 
took the left-hand road, thinking that was the right 
one, but before night you found out your mistake, 
and yet your horse was too exhausted and you 
were too tired to retrace your steps, and the mis- 
take you made was an irretrievable mistake. 

You come on in life, many a time, and find there 
are three or four or fifty roads, and which one of 
the fifty to take you do not know. Let me say 
that there are forty-nine chances out of fifty that 
you will take the wrong one, unless God directs 
you, since it is a great deal easier to do that which 
is wrong than that which is right, our nature being 
corrupt and depraved. 

Blessed be God, we have a directory ! As a man 
lost on the mountains takes out his map and sees 
the right road marked down, and makes up his 
mind what to do, so the Lord, in his gospel map, 
has said : " This is the way, walk ye in it." Blessed 
be God for his guiding mercy! 

Think also of the comforting mercy of God. In 



ALL ABOUT MERCY. 459 

the days when men lived five or six or seven hun- 
dred years, I suppose that troubles and misfortunes 
came to them at very great intervals. Life did not 
go so fast. There were not so many vicissitudes ; 
there was not so much jostling. I suppose that 
now a man in forty years will have as many vexa- 
tions and annoyances and hardships and trials and 
temptations as those antediluvians had in four hun- 
dred years. 

No one escapes. If you are not wounded in 
this side, you must be wounded in that. There 
are foes all around about you. There is no one 
who has come up to this moment without having 
been cleft of misfortunes, without having been dis- 
appointed and vexed and outraged and trampled 
on. 

The world comes and tries to solace us, but I 
think the most impotent thing on earth is human 
comfort when there is no gospel mixed with it. 
It is a sham and an insult to a wounded spirit — all 
the comfort that this world can offer a man ; but in 
his time of darkness and perplexity and bereave- 
ment and persecution and affliction, Christ comes 
to him with the solace of his Spirit, and he says : 
" Oh, thou tempted one, thou shalt not be tempted 
above that thou art able." He tells the invalid, 
" There is a land where the inhabitants never say, 

'I am sick.'" He says to the assaulted one, "You 

37* 



460 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

are no better than I am ; they maltreated me, and 
the servant ought not to expect to have it easier 
than his Lord. 

He comes to the bereaved one and says: "I am 
the resurrection and the life ; he that believeth in 
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." And 
if the trouble be intricate, if there be' so many 
prongs to it, so many horns to it, so many hoofs 
to it, that he cannot take any of the other prom- 
ises and comforts of God's word to his soul, he can 
take that other promise made for a man in the last 
emergency and when everything else fails: "All 
things work together for good to those that love 
God." Oh, have you never sung of the comfort- 
ing mercy of God ? 

Think also of his enthroning mercy. Notwith- 
standing there are so many comforts in Christ's 
gospel, I do not think that we could stand the as- 
sault and rebuff of the world for ever. We all 
were so weary of the last war. It seemed as if 
those four years were as long as any fifteen or 
twenty years of our life. But how could we en- 
dure one hundred years, or five hundred years, or 
a thousand years, of earthly assault? Methinks 
the spirit would wear down under the constant 
chafing and the assault of the world. 

Blessed be God, this story of grief and trouble 
and perplexity will come to an end ! There are 



ALL ABOUT MERCY. 46 1 

twelve gates to heaven, and they are all gates of 
mercy. There are paths coming into all those 
gates, and they are all paths of mercy. There 
are bells that ring in the eternal towers, and they 
are all chimes of mercy. There are mansions pre- 
pared for us in this good land when we have done 
with the toils of earth, and all those mansions are 
mansions of mercy. Can you not now strike upon 
your soul, saying, " Bless the Lord, O my soul, for 
thy pardoning mercy, for thy restraining mercy, for 
thy guiding mercy, for thy comforting mercy, for 
thy enthroning mercy" ? 




CHAPTER LXXIII. 

UNDER THE CAMEL'S SADDLE. 

RACHEL had been affianced to Jacob, and one 
day while her father Laban was away from 
home she eloped with Jacob: Laban returned 
home and expressed great sorrow that he had not 
been there when his daughter went away ; saying 
that he would have allowed her to go, and that she 
might have been accompanied with a harp and the 
dance and with many beautiful presents. 

Laban started for Rachel and Jacob. He was 
very anxious to recover the gods that had been 
stolen from his household. He supposed that 
Rachel had taken them, as she really had. He 
came up in the course of a few days to the party 
and demanded the gods that had been taken from 
his house. Jacob knew nothing about the felony, 
but Rachel was secreting these household gods. 

Laban came into the tent where she was, and 
asked for them. She sat upon a saddle of a camel, 
the saddle having- been laid down at the side of 
the tent, and under this camel's saddle were the 
images. Rachel pretended to be sick, and said 

462 



UXDER THE CAMEL 'S SADDLE. 463 

she could not rise. Her father, Laban, supposed 
that she told the truth, and looked everywhere but 
under the camel's saddle, where really the lost 
images were. He failed in the search, and went 
back home without them. 

It was a strange thino- for Laban to do. He 
pretended to be a worshiper of the true God. 
What did he want of those images ? Ah, the fact 
w r as, that though he worshiped God, he worshiped 
with only half a heart, and he sometimes, I sup- 
pose, repented of the fact that he worshiped him 
at all, and really had a hankering after those old 
gods which in his earliest days he had worshiped. 
And now we find him in Rachel's tent looking for 
them. 

Do not let us, however, be too severely critical 
of Laban. He is only the representive of thou- 
sands of Christian men and women, who, once 
having espoused the worship of God, go back to 
their old idols. When a man professes faith in 
Christ on communion-day, with the sacramental 
cup in his hand, he swears allegiance to the Lord 
God Almighty, and says, " Let all my idols perish !" 
but how many of us have forsaken our fealty to 
God, and have gone back to our old idols ! 

There are many who sacrifice their soul's inter- 
ests in the idolatry of wealth. There was a time 
when you saw the folly of trying with money to 



464 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

satisfy the longing of your soul. You said, when 
you saw men going down into the dust and tussle 
of life, "Whatever god I worship, it won't be a 
golden calf." You saw men plunge into the life 
of a spendthrift, or go down into the life of a 
miser, like one of old smothered to death in his 
own money-chest, and you thought, " I shall be 
very careful never to be caught in these traps in 
which so many men have fallen, to their souls' 
eternal discomfiture." 

But you went down into the world ; you felt the 
force of temptation ; you saw men all around you 
making money very fast, some of them sacrificing 
all their Christian principle ; you felt the fascination 
come upon your own soul, and before you knew 
it, you were with Laban going down to hunt in 
Rachel's tent for your lost idols. 

On one of our pieces of money you find the 
head of a goddess, a poor inscription for an Amer- 
ican coin ; far better the inscription that the old 
Jews put upon the shekel, a pot of manna and an 
almond rod, alluding to the mercy and deliverance 
of God in their behalf in other days. But how sel- 
dom it is that money is consecrated to Christ ! In- 
stead of the man owning the money, the money 
owns the man. It is evident, especially to those 
with whom they do business every day, that they 
have an idol, or that, having once forsaken the 



UNDER THE CAMEL'S SADDLE. 465 

idol, they are now in search of it, far away from 
the house of God, in Rachel's tent looking for 
the lost images. 

One of the mighty men of India said to his 
servants : " Go not near the cave in such a ravine." 
The servants talked the matter over, and said : 
"There must be gold there, or certainly this 
mighty man would not warn us against going." 
They went, expecting to find a pile of gold ; they 
rolled away the stone from the door of the cave, 
when a tiger sprang out upon them and devoured 
them. 

Many a man in the search of gold has been 
craunched in the jaws of destruction. Going out 
far away from the God whom they originally wor- 
shiped, they are seeking in the tent of Rachel, 
Laban's lost images. 

There are a great many Christians in this day 
renewing the idolatry of human opinion. There 
was a time when they woke up to the folly of listen- 
ing to what men said of them. They soliloquized 
in this way : " I have a God to worship, and I am 
responsible only to him. I must go straight on 
and do my whole duty, whether the world likes it 
or don't like it;" and they turned a deaf ear to the 
fascinations of public applause. After a while they 
did something very popular. They had the popu- 
lar ear and the popular heart. Men approved 



466 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

them, and poured gentle words of flattery into 
their ear, and before they realized it they went 
into the search of that which they had given up, 
and were, with Laban, hunting in Rachel's tent for 
the lost images. 

Between eleven and twelve o'clock one June 
night, Gibbon, the great historian, finished his 
history. Seated in a summer garden, he says 
that as he wrote the last line of that wonderful 
work he felt great satisfaction. He closed the 
manuscript, walked out into the moonlight in the 
garden, and then, he said, he felt an indescribable 
melancholy come upon his soul at the thought that 
so soon he must leave all the fame that he would 
acquire by that manuscript. 

The applause of this world is a very mean god 
to worship. It is a Dagon that falls upon its wor- 
shipers and crushes them to death. Alas for those 
who, fascinated by human applause, give up the 
service of the Lord God and go with Laban to 
hunt in Rachel's tent for the lost images ! 

There are many Christians being sacrificed to 
appetite. There was a time when they said : " I 
will not surrender to evil appetites." For a while 
they seemed to break away from all the allure- 
ments by which they were surrounded, but some- 
times they felt that they were living upon a severe 
regimen. They said : " After all, I will go back to 



UNDER THE CAMEL'S SADDLE. 467 

my old bondage ;" and they fell away from the 
house of God, and fell away from respectability, 
and fell away for ever. 

One of the kings* in olden times, the legend 
says, consented that the devil might kiss him on 
both shoulders, but no sooner were the kisses im- 
printed upon the shoulders than serpents grew 
forth and began to devour him, and as the king 
tried to tear off the serpents he found he was 
tearing his own life out. And there are men who 
are all enfolded in adders of evil appetite and pas- 
sion that no human power can ever crush ; and 
unless the grace of God seizes hold of them, these 
adders will become " the worm that never dies." 
Alas for those who, once having broken away 
from the mastery of evil appetites and passion, 
go back to the sins that they once renounced, 
and, with Laban in Rachel's tent, go to hunt for 
the lost images ! 

There are a great many also sacrificed by indo- 
lence. In the hour of their conversion they looked 
off upon the world, and said : " Oh how much work 
to be done, how many harvests to be gathered, how 
many battles to be fought, how many tears to be 
wiped away, and how many wounds to be bound 
up !" and they looked with positive surprise upon 
those who could sit idle in the kingdom of God 
while there was so much work to do. After a 

38 



468 AROUND THE TEA- TABLE. 

while they found their efforts were unappreciated, 
that some of their best work in behalf of Christ 
was caricatured and they were laughed at, and 
they began to relax their effort, and the question 
was no more, "What can I do for Christ?" but 
" How can I take my ease ? where can I find my 
rest?" Are there not some of you who in the 
hour of your consecration started out nobly, 
bravely and enthusiastically for the Saviour's king- 
dom who have fallen back into ease of body and 
ease of soul, less anxious about the salvation of 
men than you once were, and are actually this 
moment in Rachel's tent hunting up the lost im- 
ages? 

Oh, why go down hunting for our old idols? 
We have found out they are insufficient for the 
soul. Eyes have they, but they see not ; ears 
have they, but they hear not ; and hands have 
they, but they handle not. There is only one 
God to worship, and he sits in the heavens. 

How do I know that there is only one God ? I 
know it just as the boy knew it when his teacher 
asked him how many Gods there are. He said, 
"There is but one." 

" How do you know that?" inquired the teacher. 

The boy replied, " There is only room for one, 
for he fills the heavens and the earth." 

Come into the worship of that God. He is a 



UNDER THE CAMEL'S SADDLE. 469 

wise God. He can plan out all the affairs of your 
life. He can mark out all the steps that you ought 
to take. He will put the sorrows in the right place, 
and the victories in the right place, and the defeats 
in the right place ; and coming to the end of your 
life, if you have served him faithfully, you will be 
compelled to say, " Just and true are thy ways ; 
thou art, O Lord, always right." 

He is a mighty God. Have him on your side, 
and you need not fear earth or hell. He can ride 
down all your spiritual foes. He is mighty to 
overthrow your enemies. He is mighty to save 
your soul. Ay, he is a loving God. He will put 
the arms of his love around about your neck. He 
will bring you close to his heart and shelter you 
from the storm. In times of trouble he will put 
upon your soul the balm of precious promises. 
He will lead you all through the vale of tears 
trustfully and happily, and then at last take you 
to dwell in his presence, where there is fullness 
of joy, and at his right hand, where there are 
pleasures for evermore. Oh, compared with such 
a wise God, such a mighty God, such a loving 
God, what are all the images under the camel's 
saddle in the tent of Rachel? 



CHAPTER LXXIV. 

HALF-AND-HALF CHURCHES. 

THERE is a verse in Revelation that presents 
a nauseated Christ : " Because thou art luke- 
warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out 
of my mouth!' 

After we have been taking a long walk on a 
summer day, or been on a hunting chase, a draught 
of cold water exhilarates. On the other hand, after 
standing or walking in the cold air and being 
chilled, hot water, mingled with some beverage, 
brings life and comfort to the whole body ; but 
tepid water, neither hot nor cold, is nauseating. 

Now, Christ says that a church of that tempera- 
ture acts on him as an emetic : I will spew thee out 
of my mouth. 

The church that is red hot with religious emo- 
tion, praying, singing, working, Christ having taken 
full possession of the membership, must be to 
God satisfactory. 

On the other hand, a frozen church may have its 
uses. The minister reads elegant essays, and im- 
proves the session or the vestry in rhetorical 

470 



HALF-AND-HALF CHURCHES. 47 1 

composition. The music is artistic and improves 
the ear of the people, so that they can better 
appreciate concert and opera. 

The position of such a church is profitable to 
the book-binder who furnishes the covers to the 
liturgy, and the dry-goods merchants who supply 
the silks, and the clothiers who furnish the broad- 
cloth. Such a church is good for the business 
world, makes trade lively and increases the de- 
mand for fineries of all sorts, for a luxurious relig- 
ion demands furs and coats, and gaiters to match. 
Christ says he gets along with a church, cold or 
hot. 

But an unmitigated nuisance to God and man 
is a half-and-half church, with piety tepid. The 
pulpit in such a church makes more of orthodoxy 
than it does of Christ. It is immense on defini- 
tions. It treats of justification and sanctification 
as though they were two corpses to be dissected. 
Its sermons all have a black morocco cover, which 
some affectionate sister gave the pastor before he 
was married, to wrap his discourse in, lest it get 
mussed in the dust of the pulpit. Its gestures are 
methodical, as though the man were ever con- 
scious that they had been decreed from all eter- 
nity, and he were afraid of interfering with the 
decree by his own free agency. 

Such a pulpit never startles the people with the 



472 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

horrors of an undone eternity. No strong meat, 
but only pap, flour and water, mostly water. The 
church prayer-meeting is attended only by a few 
gray heads who have been in the habit of going 
there for twenty years, not because they expect 
any arousing time or rapturous experiences, but 
because they feel only a few will be there, and 
they ought to go. 

The minister is sound. The membership sound. 
The music sound. If, standing in a city of a hun- 
dred thousand people, there are five or ten con- 
versions in a year, everything is thought to be 
"encouraging." But Christ says that such a 
church is an emetic. " Because thou art neither 
cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth." 

My friends, you had better warm up or freeze 
over. Better set the kettle outside in the atmo- 
sphere at zero, or put it on the altar of God and 
stir up the coals into a blaze. If we do not, God 
will remove us. 

Christian men are not always taken to heaven 
as a reward, but sometimes to get them out of the 
way on earth. They go to join the tenth-rate 
saints in glory; for if such persons think they will 
stand with Paul, and Harlan Page, and Charlotte 
Elizabeth, they are much mistaken. 

When God takes them up, the church here is 
better off. We mourn slightly to have them go, 



HALF-AND-HALF CHURCHES. All 

because we have got used to having them around, 
and at the funeral the minister says all the good 
things about the man that can well be thought 
of, because we want to make the funeral as re- 
spectable as possible. I never feel so much 
tempted to lie as when an inconsistent and useless 
Christian has died, and I want in my final remarks 
to make a good case out for the poor fellow. Still, 
it is an advantage to have such a man get out of 
the way. He is opposed to all new enterprises. 
He puts back everything he tries to help. His 
digestion of religious things is impaired, and his 
circulation is so poor that no amount of friction 
can arouse him. 

Now, it is dangerous for any of you to stay in 
that condition. If you cannot be moved, God will 
kill you, and he will put in your place those who 
will do the work you are neglecting. 

My friends, let all arouse ! The nearness of 
our last account, the greatness of the work to be 
done, and the calls of God's word and providence, 
ought to stir our souls. After having been in the 
harvest field so long it would be a shame in the 
nightfall of death to go home empty-handed. 
Gather up a few gleanings from the field, and 
beat them out, that it may be found that Ruth had 
at least " one ephah of barley." 



CHAPTER LXXV. 

THORNS. 

THE Christian world has long been guessing 
what Paul's thorn in the flesh was. I have 
a book that in ten pages tries to show what Paul's 
thorn was not, and in another ten pages tries to 
show what it was. 

Manv of the theological doctors have felt Paul's 
pulse to see what was the matter with him. I 
suppose that the reason he did not tell us what it 
was may have been because he did not want us to 
know. He knew that if he stated what it was 
there would have been a great many people from 
Corinth bothering him with prescriptions as to 
how he miorht cure it. 

Some say it was diseased eyes, some that it was 
a humped back. It may have been neuralgia. 
Perhaps it was gout, although his active habits 
and a sparse diet throw doubt on the supposition. 
Suffice it to say it was a thorn — that is, it stuck 
him. It was sharp. 

It was probably of not much account in the 
eyes of the world. It was not a trouble that 

474 



THORNS. 47$ 

could be compared to a lion or a boisterous sea. 
It was like a thorn that you may have in your 
hand or foot and no one know it. Thus we see 
that it becomes a type of those little nettlesome 
worries of life that exasperate the spirit. 

Every one has a thorn sticking him. The 
housekeeper finds it in unfaithful domestics ; or 
an inmate who keeps things disordered; or a 
house too small for convenience or too large to 
be kept cleanly. The professional man finds it in 
perpetual interruptions or calls for " more copy." 
The Sabbath- school teacher finds it in inattentive 
scholars, or neighboring teachers that talk loud 
and make a great noise in giving a little in- 
struction. 

One man has a rheumatic joint which, when the 
wind is north-east, lifts the storm signal. Another 
a business partner who takes full half the profits, 
but does not help earn them. These trials are 
the more nettlesome because, like Paul's thorn, 
they are not to be mentioned. Men get sympathy 
for broken bones and mashed feet, but not for the 
end of sharp thorns that have been broken off in 
the fingers. 

Let us start out with the idea that we must 
have annoyances. It seems to take a certain 
number of them to keep us humble, wakeful and 
prayerful. To Paul the thorn was as disciplinary 



47 6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

as the shipwreck. If it is not one thing, it is an- 
other. If the stove does not smoke, the boiler 
must leak. If the pen is good, the ink must be 
poor. If the editorial column be able, there must 
be a typographical blunder. If the thorn does not 
pierce the knee, it must take you in the back. Life 
must have sharp things in it. We cannot make 
up our robe of Christian character without pins 
and needles. 

We want what Paul got — grace to bear these 
things. Without it we become cross, censorious 
and irascible. We get in the habit of sticking our 
thorns into other people's fingers. But God 
helping us, we place these annoyances in the 
category of the "all things that work together 
for good." We see how much shorter these 
thorns are than the spikes that struck through 
the palms of Christ's hands ; and remembering 
that he had on his head a whole crown of thorns, 
we take to ourselves the consolation that if we 
suffer with him on earth we shall be glorified with 
him in heaven. 

But how could Paul positively rejoice in these 
infirmities? I answer that the school of Christ 
has three classes of scholars. In the first class 
we learn how to be stuck with thorns without 
losing our patience. In the second class we learn 



THORNS. 



477 



how to make the sting positively advantageous. 
In the third class of this school we learn how 
even to rejoice in being pierced and wounded, 
but that is the senior class ; and when we get to 
that, we are near graduation into glory. 




CHAPTER LXXVI. 

WHO TOUCHED ME? 

THERE is nothing more unreasonable and 
ungovernable than a crowd of people. Men 
who standing alone or in small groups are deliber- 
ate in all they do, lose their self-control when they 
come to stand in a crowd. You have noticed this, 
if you have heard a cry of fire in a large assem- 
blage, or have seen people moving about in great 
excitement in some mass-meeting, shoving, jostling 
and pulling at each other. 

But while the Lord Jesus had been performing 
some wonderful works, and a great mob of people 
were around him, shoving this way and that way, 
all the jostling he received evoked from him no 
response. 

After a while I see a wan and wasted woman 
pressing through the crowd. She seems to have 
a very urgent errand. I can see from her coun- 
tenance that she has been a great sufferer. She 
comes close enough to put her finger on the hem 
of Christ's garment, and the very moment she 
puts her finger on that garment, Jesus says : 
"Who touched me?" 

478 



WHO TOUCHED ME? 48 1 

I would like to talk to you of the extreme sen- 
sitiveness of Jesus. It is very often the case that 
those men who are mighty have very little fine- 
ness of feeling ; but notwithstanding the fact that 
the Lord Jesus Christ was the King of glory, 
having all power in heaven and on earth, so soon 
as this sick woman comes up and puts her finger 
on the hem of his garment, that moment all the 
feelings of his soul are aroused, and he cries out : 
" Who touched me ?" 

I remark that poverty touches him. The Bible 
says that this woman had spent all her money 
on physicians ; she had not got the worth of her 
money. Those physicians in Oriental lands were 
very incompetent for their work, and very exor- 
bitant in their demands. You know they have a 
habit even to this day in those countries of 
making very singular charges. Sometimes they 
examine the capacity of the person to pay, and 
they take the entire estate. 

At any rate, this woman spoken of in the text 
had spent her money on physicians, and very poor 
physicians at that. The Lord saw her poverty 
and destitution. He knew from what a miserable 
home she had come. He did not ask, "Who 
touched me?" because he did not know; he 
wanted to evoke that woman's response, and he 
wanted to point all the multitude to her particular 

39 



482 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

case before her cure was effected, in order that 
the miraculous power might be demonstrated be- 
fore all the people, and that they might be made 
to believe. 

In this day, as then, the touch of poverty always 
evokes Christ's attention. If you be one who 
has had a hard struggle to get daily bread — if the 
future is all dark before you — if you are harassed 
and perplexed, and know not which way to turn, 
I want you to understand that, although in this 
world there may be no sympathy for you, the 
heart of the Lord Jesus Christ is immediately 
moved, and you have but to go to him and touch 
him with your little finger, and you arouse all the 
sympathies of his infinite nature. 

I also learn that sickness touches him. She had 
been an invalid for twelve years. How many 
sleepless nights, what loss of appetite, what ner- 
vousness, what unrest, what pain of body, the 
world knew not. But when she came up and put 
her finger on Christ's garment, all her suffering 
thrilled through the heart of Christ instantane- 
ously. 

When we are cast down with Asiatic cholera or 
yellow fever, we cry to God for pity ; but in the 
ailments of life that continue from day to day, 
month to month and year to year are you in the 
habit of going to Christ for sympathy ? Is it in 



WHO TOUCHED ME? 483 

some fell disaster alone that you call to God for 
mercy, or is it in the little aches and pains of your 
life that you implore him? Don't try to carry 
these burdens alone. These chronic diseases are 
the diseases that wear out and exhaust Christian 
grace, and you need to get a new supply. Go to 
him this night, if never before, with all your ail- 
ments of body, and say : " Lord Jesus, look upon 
my aches and pains. In this humble and impor- 
tunate prayer I touch thee." 

I remark further that the Saviour is touched with 
all bereavements. Perhaps there is not a single room 
in your house but reminds you of some one who 
has gone. You cannot look at a picture without 
thinking she admired that. You cannot see a toy 
but you think she played with it. You cannot sit 
down and put your fingers on the piano without 
thinking she used to handle this instrument, and 
everything that is beautiful in your home is sug- 
gestive of positive sadness. 

Graves ! graves ! graves ! It is the history of 
how many families to-night ! You measure your 
life from tear to tear, from groan to groan, from 
anguish to anguish, and sometimes you feel that 
God has forsaken you, and you say, " Is his mercy 
clean gone for ever, and will he be favorable no 
more?" 

Can it be, my afflicted friends, that you have 



484 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE, 

been so foolish as to try to carry the burden alone, 
when there is an almighty arm willing to be thrust 
under you ? Can it be that you have traveled 
that desert not willing to drink of the fountains 
that God opened at your feet ? Oh, have you not 
realized the truth that Jesus is sympathetic with 
bereavement? Did he not mourn at the grave of 
Lazarus, and will he not weep with all those who 
are mourning over the dead? 

You may feel faint from your bereavements, 
and you may not know which way to turn, and all 
human solace may go for nothing; but if you 
would this night with your broken heart just go 
one step further forward, pressing through all the 
crowd of your perplexities, anxieties and sorrows, 
you might with one finger move his heart, and he 
would say, looking upon you with infinite comfort 
and compassion, " Who touched me?" 

I remark that all our sins touch him. It is gen- 
erally the fact that we make a record only of those 
sins which are sins of the action ; but where there 
is one sin of the action there are thousands of 
thought. Let us remember that God puts down 
in his book all the iniquitous thoughts that have 
ever gone through your souls. There they stand 
— the sins of 1820; the sins of 1825 ; all the sins 
of 1 83 1 ; the sins of 1835 I tne sms °f 1840; the 
sins of 1846; the sins of 1850; the sins of 1853; 



WHO TOUCHED ME? 485 

the sins of 1859; the sins of i860; the sins of 
1865; tne sms °f J 87o; the sins of 1874. Oh, I 
can't think of it with any degree of composure. 
I should fly in terror did I not feel that those sins 
had been erased by the hand of my Lord Jesus 
Christ — that hand which was wounded for my 
transgression. 

The snow falls on the Alps flake by flake, and 
day after day, and month after month, and after a 
while, at the touch of a traveler's foot, the ava- 
lanche slides down upon the villages with terrific 
crash and thunder. So the sins of our life accu- 
mulate and pile up, and after a while, unless we 
are rescued by the grace of our Lord Jesus, they 
will come down upon our souls in an avalanche of 
eternal ruin. 

When we think of our sins, we are apt to think 
of those we have recently committed — those sins 
of the past day, or the past week, or the past 
year; those sins that have been in the far dis- 
tance are all gone from our memory. You can't 
call a half dozen of them up in your mind. But 
God remembers every one of them. There is 
a record made of them. They will be your over- 
throw unless you somehow get them out of that 
book. In the great day of judgment, God will 
call the roll, and they will all answer, " here !" 

"here!" "here!" 

39* 



486 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Oh, how they have wounded Jesus ! Did he 
not come into this world to save us ? Have not 
these sins been committed against the heart and 
mercy of our Lord Jesus ? Sins committed against 
us by an enemy we can stand; but by a friend, 
how hard it is to bear ! Have we not wounded 
the Lord Jesus Christ in the house of his friends ? 

Since we stood up in the presence of the great 
congregation and attested our love for Christ and 
said from this time we will serve the Lord, have 
we not all been recreant? Have we not gone 
astray like lost sheep, and there is no health in 
us? Oh, they touch Christ; they have touched 
him on the tenderest spot of his heart. 

Let us bemoan this treatment of our best friend. 
It seems to me Christ was never so lovely as he is 
now — the chief among ten thousand and the one 
altogether lovely. Why can't you come and put 
your trust in him? He is an infinite Saviour. He 
can take all the iniquities of your life and cast 
them behind his back. Blessed is the man who 
has obtained his forgiveness, and whose sins are 
covered ! 



CHAPTER LXXVII. 

CHRIST AT THE COUNTRY-SEAT. 

WE never find Christ at a country-seat, save 
in the eighteenth chapter of John. The 
Saviour was not apt to be acquainted with people 
who owned country-seats. 

The merchants of Jerusalem had suburban resi- 
dences. Christ had somehow become acquainted 
with one of these men, and been invited by him to 
come out to the country home. There were gar- 
dens surrounding the house. After the heat and 
excitement of the day in the city, it. was pleasant 
to go out and sit and walk under the trees and 
among the flowers. 

Jesus is in the garden one night, and sees the 
gleam of torches and lanterns. Judas and an 
armed band are coming to take him captive. In 
this rough way ended the season of reflection and 
recreation. 

You find here, as elsewhere, that Jesus loved 
the country. We find him among the mountains 
and sitting by the sea. He pressed a lily irt his 
sermon. He caught a bird for a text. He walked 
in the garden the night of his capture. 

487 



488 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

So it is a good sign when a Christian finds com- 
pany, and suggestiveness, and refreshment in the 
beautiful things of God's world. There may be 
means of grace in a hyacinth or japonica. It is 
well when in the small door-ya^d of a city resi- 
dence a patch of luxuriant grass is cultivated, or 
a clematis is taught to climb. A man can preach 
better of love and faith and heaven when there 
are camellias on the pulpit. It is no evidence of 
weak sentimentality when a Christian loves natural 
beauty. Jesus resorted to a garden. 

No doubt Christ selected the garden of this 
country-seat as a place for private devotion. He 
who has no spot for secret prayer is a starveling 
Christian. A man has sorrows, temptations, sins 
and deliverances that are no one else's business. 
He is a fool who tells the world everything. 
There are prayers that belong only to God's ear. 
Better have some place consecrated to private 
prayer. Choose a pleasant place if possible — not 
the garret, not the cellar, but a room warm, lighted, 
cheerful. There is no use in penance. When 
you invite Jesus to meet you, open for him the 
most cheerful and pleasant place you can find. 
Jesus resorted to a garden. 

Notice also that it was while in this beautiful 
suburb of the city, sitting, in the summer night, 
among the trees, that he was captured of his 



CHRIST AT THE COUNTRY-SEAT. 489 

enemies. We are never more subject to attack 
from our spiritual enemies than when in the gar- 
den of ease. There is less clanger for us when 
out in the conflict of life than when we sit down 
to rest. It is while unarmed and in quiet that 
pride breaks in, and indolence and worldliness 
" with lanterns and torches." 

We need ever to be on our guard. "Watch, 
therefore, and what I say unto one, I say unto all, 
Watch /" We cannot have so high a hedge about 
our garden that Judas cannot break through. 

We want this hour for communion with God. 
We say, " Stand back, O world, with all thy cares!" 
And yet they break in. They begrudge us this 
quiet. They would like to carry us off. I see 
the gleam of their lanterns and torches. May God 
defend us from fears within and foes without ! 

We are further on in our Christian life. We 
are better or worse than last ni^ht. If in one 
hour a man may lose or win heaven, what might 
we not gain in a week ? Every moment is charged 
with eternal destinies. Our time for prayer, and 
repentance, and work will soon be gone. Let 
this hour be the golden milestone from which we 
measure our new march heavenward. O Jesus ! 
meet us in the garden, and, as of old, let thy 
"garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia!" 



CHAPTER LXXVIII. 

BE RE A VEMENT. 

ONE-HALF of the families of the earth sit at 
this time in dumb amazement at the afflictive 
providences of God. Bereavement for the most 
part is inexplicable. Why is the husband taken 
in mid-life before the children are educated and 
reared? Why does the mother go away into 
eternity at the time she is most needed here ? 
Why must the young man die at the close of a 
collegiate course that was intended to fit him for 
great usefulness? Why not let us all die of old 
a^e after our work is fully done and life has no 
more attractions ? 

A few months a°:o there were united in the 
bonds of marriage two of my friends. Amid a 
great throng of congratulating people they started 
life. A bright home was set up. God was in the 
dwelling. Business prospects opened. Friends 
without number gathered around him in the world 
and in the church. But on the way home from 
the store his foot slips, and without consciousness 
enough to grasp in farewell the hand that he had 
on the 20th of June taken in pledge, he goes away 

490 



BE RE A VEMENT. 49 1 

from the earth for ever. Men of the world, ex- 
plain that ! Human philosophy, solve this riddle ! 

I have just returned from a scene just as inex- 
plicable. My sister, in mid-life, with a large family 
of children in every possible need of her council 
and tenderness, and holding the responsible posi- 
tion of a pastor's wife, is called heavenward from 
as fine a sphere of usefulness as any one could 
possibly hold. 

What her life was you may judge from her 
dying experiences. She said in her last moments, 
" It is nothing for a Christian to die. One minute 
here, and the next with Jesus. Oh what a relig- 
ion we have ! We do immediately pass into glory. 
Some say that dying people have doubts, but they 
do not. How can they doubt with such a precious 
Jesus ? I see him now ! He encloses my children 
in his arms of love, and they will all be saved. It 
was a tremendous struggle to give them up, but I 
know that they will all be saved. I am crossing 
the river, but I do not fear. I will shut up my 
eyes now and go to sleep and wake up in glory ! 
Good-bye /" 

Her life had been in harmony with all she said. 
She sang more than any person I ever knew. She 
was always singing. I remember in my boyhood 
days of sometimes getting tired of this perpetual 
music, and of saying to her, " Mary, do stop sing- 



49 2 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

ing !" but she would not stop. She never will 
stop. 

Why was such a Christian sister and wife and 
mother transported ? Strike a light, if you can, 
over this mystery. Analyze, dissect, philosophize, 
a thousand years, and you cannot by any human 
device open one shutter. But in the gospel the 
sun rises. Light gradually breaks in as the morn- 
ing looks through the cracks of the door and the 
lattice — not full day, but a promise of high noon. 

Heaven must be populated. There is not so 
much room on the Western prairies and table-lands 
for more settlers as there is room in the upper 
country for more people. Heaven has only one 
want, and that is of greater population. It is 
sparsely inhabited yet, as compared with its future 
citizenship. The crowns are not half taken, nor 
the robes half worn. 

Heaven is like a house in which a levee is to 
be held at ten o'clock. At nine o'clock the rooms 
are all ablaze with lights, and the servants, gloved 
and vestured, are waiting to open the doors. The 
rooms of our Father's house are illumined, and 
the chamberlains are ready, and the table is spread. 
A few have entered, but heaven is not yet fully 
begun. They have only sung the opening piece. 

Now, how shall God fill up his house except by 
subtracting from this world ? The continent of 



BEREAVEMENT. 493 

heaven is to be peopled from the surrounding 
islands. If so, I can understand why God should 
take our young brother rather than some of his 
comrades not half so useful, and my sister rather 
than a thousand women who are of no Christian 
service. 

Why, in almost all cases it is the loveliest one 
of the family that is transported. Heaven wants 
the best. Why should not the great capital of the 
universe have the pick of everything? The half- 
and-half Christians will get into glory, but they 
need be kept here a good while yet for polishing. 
Those who are ready God takes. The earlier 
inhabitants of a place make the greatest impres- 
sion upon its future character, and so heaven 
ought to have the best first. 

Besides that, if there were a shipwreck, and you 
went out with a life-boat, and you find some of 
your friends clinging to the hulk, you would be 
apt to take them ashore first. God seems to set 
his especial love on some; and when he finds them 
shivering amid this world's temptations and sor- 
rows, he first lifts them out of the breakers. 

Oh, weep not for the Christian dead ! If they 
go through long sickness, in which there is oppor- 
tunity for parting admonition, thank God for that. 
But if by sudden transition, and they have not a 
moment of consciousness, thank God that they 

40 



494 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

escape the exhaustion of sickness, and that from 
the health of earth they stepped into the health 
of heaven. Long not for the last words that were 
not spoken. 

If the life has been right, the death cannot be 
wrong. If the banquet has been rich, it matters 
not how the lights are turned out at the close. 
So many of our friends have gone over the 
stream we shall all want to go there too. Hea- 
ven is getting to me to be a very matter-of-fact 
heaven. Our friends going in forget to shut the 
door after them. From the cold snow-bank of 
the grave I pluck this crocus : Those who sleep in 
Jesus will God bring with him. 




CHAPTER LXXIX. 

THE RAGAMUFFINS. 

IT has got to be a question of stupendous im- 
port what is to be done with the destitute 
children of our country, or the ragamuffins, as 
society contemptuously calls them. We must act 
upon them, or they will act upon us. We must 
Christianize them, or they will heathenize us. 

All over this land, what multitudes of the home- 
less, and the houseless, and the Godless ! Could 
you gather them all together, what a scene of rags, 
and filth, and hunger, and desolation ! If you 
could see those little feet on the broad way to 
death which, through Christian charity, ought to 
be pressing the narrow path of life, if you could 
hear the words of cursing blistering those lips 
which ought to be singing the praises of God, if 
you could see those hearts which, at that age, 
ought not to have been soiled by one vile thought, 
already become the sewers of iniquity, through 
which floats the most disgusting depravity, if you 
could see these suffering little ones sacrificed on 
the altar of every iniquitous passion, and scalded 

495 



49 6 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

with a baptism of fire from the very lava of the 
pit, — your soul would recoil from the scene crying, 
" Begone, thou dream of hell !" 

The Spartans who threw their sickly children 
to the wild beasts were merciful compared with 
that stolid indifference which, in this age, would 
give up the destitute youth of our country to be 
eaten up of their own depravity. 

These so-called ragamuffins are coming up to 
be the men and women. That spark of iniquity 
which you might put out with one drop of the 
water of life, will flame up into a conflagration of 
every green thing that God planted in the soul, 
and that which was intended to be a temple of the 
Holy Ghost will be a scarred and blasted ruin, 
every light quenched, and every altar in the dust. 

That petty thief who slipped into your store 
and took a yard of cloth from your counter will 
be the highwayman of the forest, or the burglar 
at midnight picking the lock of your money-safe, 
and blowing up your store to hide the villainy. A 
great army, with staggering step, and blood-shot 
eye, and drunken hoot, they will come on, gather- 
ing recruits from every grog-shop and den of 
infamy, to take the ballot-box and hurrah at the 
elections. 

The great, hard-knotted fist of ruffianism will 
have more power than the gentle hand of sobriety 



THE RAGAMUFFINS. 497 

and intelligence. Men bloated, and with the sig- 
nature of crime burned in from the top of their 
forehead to the bottom of their chin, will look 
honest men out of countenance. Moral corpses 
which ought to be buried a hundred feet deep to 
keep them from poisoning the air will rot in the 
face of the sun at mid-day. Industry, in her plain 
frock, with her hand at the spindle, will be unap- 
preciated, while multitudes of able-bodied men 
will wander about in utter idleness, with their 
hands on their hips, saying, " The world owes us 
a living." 

Oh what a terrible force there is in iniquity 
when, uneducated, unrestrained and unblanched, 
it goes on concentrating, and deepening, and 
widening, and gathering momentum, until it swings 
ahead with a very triumph of desolation, drowning 
like surges, scorching like flame, crushing like 
rocks ! 

Cold indifference meQts these desperate ones 
and says, "What a pity! but it can't be helped." 
The law meets them and says, " Blackwell's Island 
and Sing-Sing are the places for you." Fashion- 
able fastidiousness meets them, and gathering up 
its robes, says, " They are so dirty I cannot bear to 
have them touch me." 

But genuine Christian charity stretches forth its 
arms and says, " Come in your rags and desola- 

40* 



49 8 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

tion ; the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all 
sin !" And while I believe in all good worldly 
reforms, I also believe that one drop of the blood 
of Christ will cure more of the woes of the world 
than an oceanful of human quackery. 

Some have said, "Let the Church through its 
regular services do this work." We reply there 
are a great multitude of the destitute who do not 
come under the ministrations of the pulpit. " Oh," 
said a poor boy to a good man who reproved him 
for wickedness, " it is very easy for you, mister, to 
be good, but I tell you we poor chaps hain't got 
no chance. My father died when I was very small, 
and I have to pick rags for a living ; and when I 
can't get the rags, I has to steal. You see, we 
poor chaps ain't got no chance." 

When they got up from their hands and knees 
to walk, their first step was on the road to ruin, 
and every day since, they have been plunging 
down to lower depths, and wilder despair, and 
deeper darkness. 

There are many about us in boyhood and girl- 
hood in comfortable circles that are going to be 
something very good or very bad — very bright 
or very ignorant ; and they will yet make their 
parents glad with an infinite gladness or pain 
them with an infinite sorrow. They go bounding 
through the hall ; they shout in the yard ; they 



THE KAGAMCJFEIXS. 499 

sing in the school. This activity that now strikes 
the ball, and runs the race, and rolls the hoop, and 
flies the kite, will soon be ready for the higher 
game of life, where fortunes are to be made, and 
reputation achieved, and temptations combated, 
and immortal souls jeopardized, and kingdoms of 
glory won. 

Call up that child ; push back his hair. Shall 
this face be ever brightening up with benevolence, 
or scarred and pinched and blasted with low ex- 
cesses ? Shall those eyes become more and more 
intelligent, or shall they acquire the dishonest 
glance and the servile downcast? Put your hand 
on that child's heart. Shall it always beat with 
noble impulses, or will it be a thief's heart, a cow- 
ard's heart, a traitor's heart ? 

My soul stands back abashed and overwhelmed 
in the presence of these young princes of God, 
these sons and daughters of immortality, these 
voyagers eternity bound. They have started out 
on a journey which will never end, but winding up 
among hierarchical splendors, yet upward bound 
for higher thrones and loftier empires, for ever, 
for ever ; or else pitching off the verge of a great 
night, deep, fathomless, irremediable, down for 
ever, for ever ! 

I have so much faith in the advancement of our 
race under the gospel that I suppose the rising 



50O AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

generations are to have in their number more 
noble men than their predecessors. I suppose 
that every day we are walking unconsciously 
among Enochs, and Augustines, and YYilberforces, 
and Clarksons, and Moffits, and Robert Halls. 
There they are ! on the back seat in the mission 
school. There they are ! playing marbles in the 
low alley, their knees out, their elbows out, their 
toes out, their hats rimless, and their souls Christ- 
less ; and in double columns there is printed on 
their countenance a tragedy of unutterable pain. 

But they shall be gathered in. Sabbath-schools 
will do their work. Tract and Bible societies will 
do their work. A Christian printing-press will do 
its work. And they who are now scoffed at as 
ragamuffins will pass on to be the men of might 
and the men of God in future vears, though now 
their knees are out, and their elbows out, and their 
toes out. 

Stand back, and let them pass on, the long 
procession of Christians, and philanthropists, and 
heroes, and reformers, and statesmen, and let our 
prayers go with them, and all Christian influences 
attend them, long after we have unbuckled the 
sword of the conflict and gone home to rest. 



CHAPTER LXXX. 

HARSH CRITICISMS. 

WE often sit with amazement and hear people 
tear to pieces reputations that have been a 
quarter of a century forming. Men, and women 
too, seize with avidity evil reports, and like mag- 
gots run in and out the carcasses of fallen cha- 
racter. Society becomes a great slaughter-house 
in which honorable names are strangulated and 
butchered. 

When a man begins to totter a little in his in- 
tegrity or Christian principle, instead of gathering 
around to steady him, and keep him from com- 
plete prostration, we come out from our homes 
and our associations to push him flat down. 

Talebearers almost always deal in superlatives. 
If a man shows a little impatience, they say he 
was livid with ra^e. If he were seen taking a 
glass, they call him a besotted inebriate. They 
put the blow-pipe of their exaggeration into the 
slightest inconsistency, and blow till the cheeks 

601 



502 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

are distended, and the bubble swells, and the story 
is rounded into a great orb in which swim all the 
rainbows of conceit, and you can see almost any- 
thing you want to see. They are hounds, good 
for nothing but a chase. 

When you hear evil of any one, suspend judg- 
ment. Do not decide till you have heard the 
man's defence. Do not run out to meet every 
heated whelp of malice that runs with its head 
down and its tongue out. The probability is that 
it is mad, and will only bite those who attempt to 
entertain it. 

Be lenient with the fallen. You see a brother 
fall, and say, "J never could have done that!" 
Perhaps you could not, because your temptation 
does not happen to be in that direction ; but you 
have done things in the course of your life that 
these fallen men would never have done, because 
their temptation was not in that direction. 

Perhaps the devil that inhabits you is avarice, a 
more respectable vice. You grind the faces of the 
poor. You have an infernal clutch for the throat 
of the unfortunate. There is no more mercy in 
your heart than there is grace in a lion's paw or 
a rattlesnake's tooth; and though your sin does 
not bring upon you so much of social opprobrium 
as the conduct of the man whom you condemn, I 
do not know but that your sin in the sight of God 



HARSH CRITICISMS. 503 

is as loathsome and damnable as his. He sur- 
rendered to one temptation ; you surrendered to 
another. 

Do not say in boasting, " I never could have 
done such a thing as that !" You don't know what 
you would do if sufficiently tempted. You have 
an infinite soul-force. If grace direct it, a force 
for the right ; if evil influences seize upon it, a 
terrific force for the wrong. There are passions 
within your soul that have never been unchained, 
Look out if once they slip their cables ! 

In our criticisms of others let us remember that 
we have faults which our friends have to excuse. 
How much would be left of us if all those who 
see inconsistencies in us should clip away from 
our character and reputation? It is an invariable 
rule that those who make the roughest work with 
the names of others are those who have them- 
selves the most imperfections. The larger the 
beam in your own eye, the more anxious are you 
about the mote in somebody else's eye. Instead 
of going about town slashing this man's bad tem- 
per and the other man's falsity, and this woman's 
hypocrisy and that one's indiscretion, go home 
with the ten commandments as a monitor, and 
make out a list of your own derelictions. The 
best way to keep a whole city clean is for every 
housekeeper to scrub her own doorsteps. 



504 AROUND THE TEA-TABLE. 

Our mode of deciding upon others will be the 
mode which others will employ in deciding upon 
us. A harsh man, with cast-iron criticisms, will 
some day meet cast iron. You flay others, and 
others will flay you. Let one of these merciless 
critics of character, overcome by temptation, some 
day step a little out of the right path, and he will 
find himself in hail-storms of denunciation. You 
have not the entire monopoly of spikes, and goads, 
and pincers. " With what measure ye mete it 
shall be measured to you again." 

More than all, we ought to be induced away 
from all harshness by the fact that we ourselves 
are to be brought into high tribunal at the last, 
and that he shall have judgment without mercy 
that hath shown no mercy. You who are accus- 
tomed with rough grip violently to shake men for 
their misdeeds, waiting for no palliations and lis- 
tening to no appeals, what will become of you 
when, at last, with all your imperfections, you 
appear at the bar of your Maker? 




mm 

Si 

■ 









I 



■ 













■ 



«■ 



,. i 






I ...'^i.'ft 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



016 256 153 4 f 









'1 



*& 






